Forget mowing lawns, babysitting or setting up a lemonade stand. Silicon Valley's start-up culture has forever changed the way kids try to make pocket money. 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 Economics, a research firm in Carlsbad. And, based on his conversations with teen entrepreneurs, vice president of research Michael Erbschloe estimates as much as 1 percent of elementary school kids has contemplated starting an Internet business. 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.