Here’s an interesting story. Most mobile-ad startups are lucky to see success even with well-educated and experienced founders and loads of venture funding, but it’s even more impressive when one proves successful led by a 16 year-old.
UK teenager Christian Owens, 16, has done just that. His company, called Branchr, is a provider of PPC ad-services for traditional and mobile Websites as well as mobile apps. In its short existence, Branchr is already serving more than 250 million adverts to 11,000 websites/apps every month and has even acquired a second company, Atomplan, which provides business software.
Working on the company after school each day and on the weekends, Owens surpassed the $800,000 revenue mark before the startup’s first year was even over, and has plans to “become a leading name in the world of internet and mobile advertising and push myself right to the top of the game.” With big-name clients like betting site William Hill and social networking site MySpace on its roster, Owens is on track to reach that goal. “”I don’t know where I will be in 10 years time but I won’t leave Branchr until it has reached £100 million,” he said.
Owens was no stranger to being an entrepreneur before he founded Branchr. At age 14, he founded a simple website called Mac Box Bundle which resold discounted Mac software. Owens was able to negotiate big discounts with select developers to create lucrative bundles of popular Mac apps worth about $400, but sold for $50. That little venture earned Owens his first million dollars and helped the teenager fund Branchr. We cover mobile-ad startups all the time on MMW, but none that have such an interesting back-story as Branchr, we’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on this one.