A five-year-old boy is thought to be the UK’s youngest person to patent an idea after inventing a labour-saving broom to help his father sweep leaves.

Sam Houghton, of Buxton, Derbyshire, was just three when he came up with a double-headed broom to collect large debris and fine dust simultaneously.

Sam, who was inspired by animated inventors Wallace and Gromit and Archie the Inventor from TV series Balamory, said: “I saw my Daddy brushing up and made it. There are two brushes because one gets the big bits and one gets the little bits left behind.

“I don’t know if I want to be an inventor when I grow up but this was fun.”

Sam had been watching his father at work in the back yard, swapping between a large broom, for leaves and twigs, and a small one, for finer particles, when he came up with his idea.

BBC UK

Jordan Lakoduk/ entrepreneur-”I started ‘Dotcomr‘ in early 2004. My brother was getting his senior pictures taken, and he was talking to the photographer and she mentionted that she needed a website. And my brother mentioned that my brother does websites. I was really fortunate to have a really successful business person trust a high school student to get a website done and then pay me.”

Jordan’s computer savvy has really paid off. Not only has he been able to tuck some cash away, but it’s earned him attention with the McElvy Foundation. They awarded him $40,000 for college!

Jordan- “I had no idea that you could get scholarships just from being a business owner at such a young age.”

But “Dotcomer” has been a lot more than a paycheck for Jordan. It’s taught him several aspects of running a business including how to conduct himself in a professional way.

Jordan-”It’s taught me to just be aware of how you act when you’re out in public or when your with people that could bve your potential clients in the future. You never know who you’re going to be workign with.”

kxmc.com

What kind of job did you have at 17?

I posed that question to the grown-ups I encountered recently while exploring Whateverlife.com. The teen-girl site and company was started by Ashley Qualls, an entrepreneur from a working-class neighborhood outside Detroit, who happens to be 17 herself. At that age, LeeAnn Prescott, the research director at Hitwise, was working at an amusement park, fashioning faux Civil War shots of people. Robb Lippitt, the former COO of ePrize who consults for Qualls, had worked his way up from dishwasher to prep cook to manager of Buddy’s BBQ. Ceca Mijatovic, the founder of the girls portal dayZloop, didn’t have a job yet; she was a foreign-exchange student from Yugoslavia. Me? I was delivering pizza for Domino’s.

“Of course, this,” says Ian Moray of ValueClick Media, referring to Whateverlife, “is something we all wish we’d done when we were 17.”

If only the Internet had been around then. One of the many fascinating things about Whateverlife is that Ashley didn’t set out to start a business. The Internet practically did it for her. Web design was a hobby, something she’d been learning online since she was 9. As a high-school sophomore, she figured out how to create layouts for MySpace pages, and her friends at Lincoln Park High School were keen to customize theirs, much like school lockers. As word spread throughout the MySpace universe, the 15-year-old couldn’t afford the servers to support her exploding online audience. A friend suggested using Google AdSense, which generates ad revenue based on a site’s traffic. Ka-ching. Whateverlife was off and running. Ashley has created nearly 3,000 layouts, her monthly audience is around 7 million, and revenue has grown from a couple of thousand bucks a month to as much as $70,000 - more than $1 million in less than two years.

Fast Company

17-year-old Jake Fisher and Weina Scott, who met via an online message board, started their business in June 2005.

Switchpod is a podcasting hosting service that provides both free and premium accounts. You can create a podcast with their technology, upload it to Switchpod and be podcasting to the world in a matter of minutes.

Switchpod’s product soon generated 800,000 downloads and was bought out by Wizzard Software in an all-stock transaction worth $200,000. The sale also provides the partners with annual salaries of $40,000 for a 20-hour workweek.

startupjournal.com

Shay Hammond started her business when she was 11 years old. She got her idea from a dog bone cookbook she found while on vacation. She wanted to make dog treats for her dog Pancake, so she did.

“He really liked them and I thought, “Wow this could really end up being something huge!” So i went around town to see if anyone would actually sell them and i found a couple of business that would, ” Hammond said.

Now, she sells her homemade dog treats, which come in flavors such as Mutter Butter and Chic’n Lick’n, from her website and in a neighborhood store which sells local artisan’s goods on consignment. Hammond earned $700 last year and $1,500 since she started the company.

Inc.com

Turning a longtime passion into a business is fairly common. But for skateboarder Corey Worrell, it happened earlier than most.

The 16-year-old Colfax High junior has created Subject Skateboards, a home-based company that makes and sells boards, T-shirts, hats and buttons.

Corey’s interest in skateboarding began when he got his first board, at age 6.

“I really got into it at about 12,” he said.

It was also around that time he started thinking about starting his own business.

“I’d been messing around making up pretend companies,” he said. “Then this I got this idea for skateboards. I thought it sounded kind of cool, so I decided to go with it.”

He sells his products through his Web site, and at Boards N Motion in Auburn and The Riders Union board shop in Colfax. Many of his customers find him through friends and word-of-mouth.

auburnjournal.com

DePauw University student Ryan Tinker has a ways to go before he earns his college degree, but he’s already a cog in America’s entrepreneurial machine.

The 20-year-old sophomore from Overland Park collaborated with fellow DePauw student Zach Koch to start BookSnag.com in January 2006. With a $500 investment in computer equipment, the two created a Web site to help students at the small liberal arts school in Greencastle, Ind., save money buying and selling used textbooks.

BookSnag’s idea is simple: Provide a local alternative to the campus bookstore for exchanging textbooks. Students can use BookSnag for free. Sellers name a price for old textbooks and list the offer. Buyers can search by title for the books they need and either purchase at the asking price or make a counteroffer.

If a book is not available, the site directs users to Amazon.com as an alternative. Tinker and his partner earn revenue from Amazon on referrals.

The DePauw duo are among a growing number of young entrepreneurs running a business. According to the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, 188,000 self-employed people were under the age of 21 in 2005, compared with about 142,000 in 2000.

DePauw University News