Marc Benioff and eBay's former CEO, Meg Whitman.
"Living in Silicon Valley, I have seen all of these people starting their own businesses, showing the world their product, and being entrepreneurs," says Samar. "Since 4th grade, I've dreamed of being the CEO of my own business. And now, in 8th grade, I am finally one."
If Elementeo doesn't catch on, Anshul says, he's not worried. "If this business fails, I can still come home and have a nice dinner. I will still have my basketball hoop in my backyard and my skateboard in the garage."
7. The Chair Man
Sean Belnick, 20
At age 20, Sean is the oldest wunderkind in our group, but he takes a back seat to no one. And why should he? Six years ago, he started an online furniture business that grossed $38 million in 2007.
At age 14, Sean Belnick was already making $1000 a month selling Pokemon cards and other collectibles on eBay. He figured that the same model could work with almost anything. And with a stepfather who worked for a furniture maker, that market seemed like the most logical place to start. Investing $600 in Web hosting and online advertising, he launched BizChair.com to sell office furniture direct to businesses. Now, six years later, Belnick occupies the number 2 spot on Inc. Magazine's list of America's "30 coolest young entrepreneurs," and his customer list includes Microsoft, Google, and the Pentagon.
Now a junior at Emory University in Atlanta, studying business (naturally), Belnick leaves the day-to-day operations to his stepdad, Gary Glazer. After graduation, he plans to climb behind the CEO's desk once more. And when he does, he'll be sitting on more than just his laurels.
8. The Master of Domains
Matt Wegrzyn, 19
You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to get the better of Matt Wegrzyn, of Bodis.com. In fact, you might not want to go to bed at all. The creator of Bodis.com says that "a typical day probably starts at 10 a.m. for me and lasts until 5 a.m. There's just too much to do in order to sleep. I feel like I need to work every hour possible on the weekdays in order for this company to be successful."
Bodis is a domain-name parking service. If you invest in a domain name but don't want to create a site for it, you can park it with Bodis. It will place click-through ads on a page bearing your domain name, then split the revenues with you. In 2007, Bodis split enough ad revenues to pull in $1 million.
It was a natural venture for Matt, who bought his first domain name at 17 for $120 and sold it a few weeks later for $500. Eventually he became a premier "domainer," selling some plum names for as much as six figures. But he considers himself a developer first and an entrepreneur second.
"In my opinion, developers have the biggest advantage," says Wegrzyn, who mastered the ColdFusion programming language by age 15 and has done all of the development work on Bodis. "They can easily start their own company, sell their own software, develop their own code. And there's always something that you can develop that is not out there. There's nothing better than knowing your own service/product inside-out--literally."
It also helps if you keep a schedule that would turn most people into zombies. But Matt has vowed to start taking it easier very soon. "By 2009 I [will] work
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