Silicon Valley's start-up culture has forever changed the way kids try to make pocket money. Kids are so bathed in bits that they think it's all part of the natural landscape. D.C. Kindergartners are picking up business skills trading baseball cards and Beanie Babies. Teens are going away to business boot camps instead of summer camps. But the Internet is the great equalizer.
Kids can just log on and hatch business plans.
In the next five years, 1.2 million, or 6 percent, of teens will have started an Internet business by the time they graduate from high school, according to Computer E conomics Inc., a research firm in Carlsbad. Few of these budding Internet entrepreneurs are as young as the fourth-graders from Moraga. Unlike many kids their age, these would-be Internet moguls aren't dreaming about becoming rock stars or basketball players. And on most Sunday afternoons when other kids are out riding skateboards and scooters, these young entrepreneurs hold board meetings to plot their company's future. Rainbow Technologies' strategy is to make money by selling ads on a Web site that helps other kids do their homework.