Teenage Business Entrepreneurs
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 615 Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2018
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As children few of us have had experience of running a business. But this week we'll be hearing from four teenage entrepreneurs who have been honing their business skills in one case, since the age of 6. Evan Davis hears their stories.
GUESTS
Kate and Annie Madden, Co-founders, FenuHealth
Henry Patterson, Founder and Director, Not Before Tea
Rebecca Patterson, Not Before Tea
Akshay Ruparelia, Founder and CEO, Doorsteps.co.uk.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In this edition of the Bottom Line, we're speaking to four teenage business entrepreneurs to hear about their experiences. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello and welcome to the programme, at a rather special bottom line it is two today, |
| 0:11.0 | with three very different businesses represented around the table with me. |
| 0:15.0 | Five guests, that's more than our usual quota, so there is a crowd in here. |
| 0:20.0 | But the thing that the business is all |
| 0:21.6 | have in common, they're run by teenagers. Could that have happened in my day? I don't think so. |
| 0:27.6 | Technology and the grasp of the young upon it has made a huge difference. A culture more |
| 0:32.5 | positive towards entrepreneurship has helped too, and one that is less deferential to age, |
| 0:37.3 | perhaps, might have made it all easier to start younger. |
| 0:41.4 | Well, we'll explore those themes, but we need to meet the guests, and let's get just the briefest of introductions before we fill in the details thereafter. |
| 0:50.4 | And first up are Kate and Annie Madden. |
| 0:53.2 | Kate, you are, how old? I'm 17. And Annie? And I'm 16. 16. 17 and 16. Your business is Fenew Health. So what does it do then, Kate? It's basically a range of horse supplements or equine supplements which are added into the horses hard feed and they do loads of different |
| 1:12.7 | things so the main one is to do with gastric ulcers in horses right and Annie in terms of what |
| 1:18.3 | stage you're at the business is running you have sales and you have a product we're not talking |
| 1:23.9 | kind of blueprint stage here yeah well it's been up and running for about three years now. |
| 1:29.1 | We started at the start of 2015 when we did the BT Young Science Exhibition in Ireland. So we're in 14 countries now and we've got eight people working with us at the moment. Okay, it's pretty well advanced. Well, we'll hear much more about it through the programme. Let me go straight on, though, to my second Akshay Ruparelia, founder and director of Doorsteps.co.uk, which is, Akshay? |
| 1:52.0 | It is an online estate agency, which has been running for about a year and a half. We're |
| 1:56.3 | now the 14th largest estate agent in Britain. The aim is just to revolutionise the property market |
| 2:01.3 | by bringing it online. And you are how old now? |
| 2:04.4 | Now 19 years old. So you started the business when you were... 17. |
| 2:09.9 | 17. Yes. And just in terms of what the product is, people will be familiar with Right |
| 2:14.8 | Move and Zupler if they've moved house in the last 10 years, probably. |
... |
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