Nobody believes me when I tell them I’m 16.
Which is fine, because the age was never the thing that got me anywhere. What got me in was having credibility I could point at..
That’s the whole loop. Build something that makes a real number. Show the number in public. Use it to get the next thing you shouldn’t have access to yet. Repeat.
Here is my journey, including the parts I got wrong.
The problem with having no credentials
You need experience to get experience. When you’re 14 it’s worse, because you can’t even get the thing that’s supposed to be the starting point.
The way around it is that a number is a credential nobody can argue with.
$20k ARR from phone cases is not a lot of money. It works anyway, because of who it was attached to. It proved I could get from zero to a thing that actually runs without anyone telling me what to do next. That’s what people are betting on when they take a chance on you. Not the money. The fact that you finish things alone. (Agency)
Step 1: build something small that a stranger will pay for
The phone cases weren’t the first thing. I was around 10–11 when I started selling logos for Roblox games. See my portfolio at https://logosbyjake.carrd.co/ I then got a product for dog owners custom manufactured at 12, made a couple hundreds dollars. Then had some epic failures before my phone case brand.
It was a tiny amount of money and it taught me: someone paying you is the entire signal. Everything else is guessing. (Also learned sales from it)
At 14 I built a phone case brand, got it past $20k ARR, and sold it. Ran for roughly a year and a half selling over $30k in phone cases.
I sold the first one by sending over 200 cold dms. I founded it with $16 — a domain and a $1 a month shopify subscription. I just needed that first order to hit breakeven.
Then, I used instagram as a growth channel, made a hire, and things took off from there into me learning to handle general ops and keep things going smooth before I exited on acquire.com
If you’re copying this figure out something you can put online in a weekend and get a stranger to pay for in 30 days. I literally founded the whole phone case brand end to end in a couple of nights after school.
Ecom worked at that age because there’s no interview. Nobody says “love the energy, come back when you’re older.” People either buy or they don’t, and nobody asks how old you are at checkout. When I tried selling websites to people and doing website consulting, it worked, I made a couple thousand dollars but a constant blocker was age. They wanted to work with someone who was older.
Step 2: turn the number into access
At 16 I spent the summer interning at Thera, a YC backed fintech, which was actually the best thing I’ve done so far. It is way too fun.
I literally got this by connecting with the CEO/Founder on LinkedIn — my personal brand. We just spoke because he grew up in a town near me.
He actually offered me the internship and asked if I wanted one, little did he know that is exactly why I sent the initial connection request and something I had been working on for a couple weeks. Getting some other interest at totally different companies all came from me initiating it, where this came more inbound.
First line is proof. The number, the thing you shipped, the link. Not “I’m passionate about fintech.” You can prove you are interested in it.
Second line is about them, and specific enough that you clearly looked at what they’re building.
I personally believe the second and first line can be swapped, the order does not matter too much. Just whatever will give the smoothest transition between the two ideas.
Third line is the ask. Not “can I pick your brain.” One specific thing, ideally something you’re doing for them.
Most people get ignored because they ask for time before giving anyone a reason to spend it.
Step 3: get in a room above your level, then find the problem nobody has time to fix
The point of interning somewhere at 16 isn’t the line on your CV. It’s that you get to see what a real company’s problems are and how they operate from the inside.
I learned how a real venture backed high growth startup actually operates, what problems come up and need solving, and how teams really work here.
That’s literally where Novix came from. It takes issues and turns them into sandbox tested PRs, on the stack you already use. No migration, no new platform to learn. Just the backlog you stopped looking at three months ago, actually moving.
It started from a hard problem and lag I saw in my internship, and now has evolved to honestly be pretty different just by talking to users.
Step 4: build in public before you have anything impressive (I wish I did this earlier)
This is where I am now, and it’s the part most people get backwards. I honestly wish I started building in public earlier in my journey, its never too early to do this. They wait until there’s a number worth posting. But posting is how the number happens, because the same loop that got me the internship works on customers too.
So I’m building Novix in public. The wins and the parts that suck.
Just come up with anything, a process, update for the day or something totally different and post about it.
What turned out not to matter
Hiding my age. I spent a while trying to sound 25 in emails. It doesn’t work and it throws away the only thing that makes you memorable. A 16 year old with proof gets remembered. A generic 25 year old with the same proof doesn’t. Age is an advantage, not the opposite.
The amount of meetings I had taken while building my ecom brand just hoping they dont ask how old I am is wild.
Having a big idea. Everything I’ve done looked small and boring on day one. Five dollar logos. Phone cases.
Waiting until it’s good. Everything I’ve launched I figured out as I grew, constant problem solving.
The key takeaway:
Find something other people are doing that works, improve it, do better better until it works. Then double down on it.
What’s next
- I’m going to continue building in public on X and Linkedin — posting roughly daily
- Keep my head down grinding away and building
If your team has a backlog of small issues or too many customer support bugs to handle, send me a dm. I want to personally get you setup on getnovix.ai