These People Became Tech Rockstars Before They Turned 20

A normal 13 year old spends time watching cartoons or has his nose buried in a manga comic book. And then you have the tech prodigies who are born at a very early age, sometimes as young as 10.When most of us are trying to figure out how to work on acomputer these geeks are busy developing programs that would run computers. As difficult as it may sound it is true.We bring you a list of 10 such superstars of tech who shot to fame with their companies even before they turned 21.

 
1. Dan Shipper

 
Claim To Fame: Founded Airtime For Email at 20

 
Dan shipper is a hot commodity in the tech business. The philosophy major at UPenn has already received meaty offers from several start-ups, along with the desperate 42 floor offer that went viral recently.

 
A prodigal coder he has founded Airtime for email with Patric and Justin from Wharton University. The service lets users market products in an email signature. “It gives you a lot of granularity and control over how your marketing message is being seen and by whom.” said Dan about Airtime’s potential.

 
This young programmer has always been fascinated with building companies and services. At an early age of 10 he was developing apps for blackberry. He went on to create a entire internet service which lets users control their blackberry using the web.

 
Dan has already achieved what people double his age cannot, but he is not old enough to enjoy a drink. Kudos to him!

2. Anshul Samar

 
Claim To Fame: Founded Elementeo At 13

 
Meet our youngest entrepreneur on the list, Anshul Samar. He has developed a card game based on chemistry at the age of 13. Yes, 13! He is the CEO and he recently spoke for TedTalks.

 
Elementeo combines the fun of card games with monsters and weapons with the periodic table. The final result is a game that teaches kids more chemistry in an hour than they learn in a month from a boring textbook. Sounds like a fun idea.

3. Chris Poole

 
Claim To Fame: Founded 4chan At 15

 
Chris was a figure shrouded in mystery till his identity was revealed in July 2008. Till then he was known as moot, the creator of the meme factory 4chan. He created 4chan at the age of 15! The website is a platform for people to post photos and discuss different topics. The website became the hub of web activism where user identities could remain hidden.

 
He is one of the most influential internet entrepreneurs. 4chan is also knopwn as the secret headquarters of Anonymous.

 
Chris has now developed another project called Canvas which is a service enabling sharing and remixing media. He is a true visionary.

4. Eric Simons

 
Claim To Fame: Created ClassConnect at 19

 
Eric has successfully launched Classconnect, a platform for teachers to create and compare lesson plans. His website received a funding of $20,000 from a business incubator that used AOL’s Palo Alto office. Eric worked at the AOL office and also lived there for two entire months.

 
He was out of money and had to secretly spend nights on office couches hiding from the night guards. He successfully pulled this off for 2 months but was booted out when one guard found him. Since then he received $50,000 for his start up and has rented a house.

 
His story caught on the networking websites and has earned him a reputation of a tough and dedicated guy. “To put the odds in your favour, you’ve got to use all of the resources you can,” he said. “You have to figure out ways of staying alive.” We are sure; this spirit will make him a success very soon.

5. Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker

 
Claim To Fame: Created Napster At 18 And 19 Respectively

 
Sean Parker is known as the bad guy of tech but in reality these two Napster cofounders are superstars in their own right. Their peer to peer music sharing website revolutionized the music industry. Although the website was bombarded with lawsuits the duo proved their point. And if you can get thousands to start disliking a brand like Metallica you sure must be doing something huge.

 
Their latest venture Airtime is said to be a cool video chatting site where users can meet strangers with shared interests.

 
Parker was also influential in the early Facebook days as its president. these two are super stars of the tech world.

6. Daniel Gross

 
Claim To Fame: Cofounded Greplin At 18

 
Daniel, the Israeli programmer aims for big things in life. He was the youngest founder at Y Combinator and raised about $5 million in six months for his cool startup named Greplin. It is a Googlesque search engine but for the cloud and social media files.

 
Daniel does not intend to get a college education he is an entrepreneur at heart. He says “I was always fascinated by the greater speed start-ups function at versus larger corporations.”

 
Greplin for him is ‘the thing’ for the next few years and he aims at making it a household name. do we see another Google in the making?

7. Alex Godin

 
Claim To Fame: Cofounded Dispatch.io At 17

 
Alex admits that he has always been a geeky kid. No surprises when he co-founded Dispatch at the age of 17 and raised $1 million for it. Dispatch is a service that connects the different cloud document sharing services such as Google Docs, Dropbox etc.

 
He was also admitted to the Techstars which in itself is an achievement. Son of Seth Godin the marketing whiz, he intends to apply and begin college but not finish it!

 
He taught himself coding in just 7 days and along with some friends developed an app that was launched at New York Tech Meetup. He had also developed a DJ business when he was just 14!

8. Andrey Ternovskiy

 
Claim To Fame: Founded ChatRoulette At 17

 
This young techie developed the chat website ChatRoulette when he was 17. The site launched in 2010 was an anti Facebook concept where people were free to video chat with random strangers. Courting controversies the website had about 35,000 people on it at any given point of time.

 
This high school kid from Moscow is unsure about the future. When asked about what he would do in future he says, “I’m looking for ideas, I personally don’t know, but I’m debating changing everything. I’m meeting with people in New York and San Francisco to look for ideas and see what to do next. Who knows what will happen next.”

 
We don’t know what’s in store for Andrey but he is surel;y meant for big things in life.

9. Mark Zuckerberg

 
Claim To Fame: Created Facebook at 19

 
The world follows Zucky’s every move, that’s how big he has become. His drunken dorm room adventure changed the world. We call it Facebook and investors call it a goldmine. He was only 19 when he created the social network.

 
Zucky is a programmer par excellence and a business man with patience and foresight. Steve Jobs once said “We talk about social networks in the plural,”, “but I don’t see anybody other than Facebook out there. Just Facebook, They are dominating this.  I admire Mark Zuckerberg . . . for not selling out, for wanting to make a company.  I admire that a lot.”

 
Facebook has broken records left right and centre. It is the most used social network in the world and Mark is all set to take it to another level by expanding its operations. The world is waiting Mark.

10. Sahil Lavingya

 
Claim To Fame: Founded Gumroad at 19

 
Sahil Lavingya is your quintessential Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has dropped out of college, is making major bucks and has accolades to his name at a young age of 19. After designing for Pintrest he went on an adventure to create Gumroad, a platform for selling things easily. This 19 year old has convinced older, hardnosed investors to invest $1.1 million in his startup.

 
Sahil has always had the flare for designing and creating marvels. He is also a maverick with money. At the age of 14 he had bought a video sharing website for $400 and later sold it for $10,000. This killer combo of designing talent and the understanding of money makes him click.

 
His latest venture is all set to solve the problem of selling digital goods online. Gumroad will convert social networks such as Twitter and Facebook into marketplaces.