Juha Saarinen: Teen entrepreneurs had a head start

Quintin Lake outside Ashridge Business School in Britain. Photo / Supplied

British-based Kiwi Quintin Lake founded internet provider Maxnet in 1998, when he was just 14. He says he was inspired by an article in a Disney magazine about a couple of university students in Australia setting up an internet provider while studying.

Lake had net access at home but found that when problems struck, he and his family couldn't get help; instead, Lake had to work out things himself and wanted to capitalise on what he learned in the process of doing so.

Starting up a company wasn't a walk in the park, however. Being only 14, he was too young to be a company director (the legal age is 18) and didn't have a driver's licence. He had to run along the beach in Warkworth or take the bicycle for client visits instead.

What's more, Lake had no formal training. "I thought I knew everything we needed to know, but that was blatantly not the case," he says now.

Luckily, his mum believed in him and funded the venture. A family friend from Canada helped run the business, and Lake had the support of several older mentors - people in their 20s, working at other internet providers - who taught the teenager the things he didn't know.

Teenage years are important, and Lake says he missed out on important things. "I love football but had to give it up to run the business, ditto spending time with friends," he says.

Lake intended to go to school and run Maxnet simultaneously, but that didn't work out. "The business won out but I wasn't upset at the time," he says. Nevertheless, Lake says missing out on education is "not the sort of thing I'd advise everyone to do".

After running Maxnet for five years, sometimes out of a sickbed in the office, Lake decided it was time to call it quits and discover life. Leaving Maxnet was "surreal" he says, as the business had been so much of his life.

After moving to Britain, marrying and the birth of two children, Lake got an MBA last year. He says he enjoyed going back to finish his formal education, and now works with charities, helping them take advantage of the internet. He remains a Maxnet shareholder but doesn't take part in the day-to-day running of the company.

Despite having led his life in what seems like a back-to-front way, Lake says he doesn't have any regrets. The opportunities Maxnet brought and the people he met through the business more than made up for what he lost out on, he says.

Nevertheless, he has doubts. "I don't know what I'll say to my kids when they're 14, I really don't.

"There's no one right piece of advice, it all depends on the person," Lake says, adding that if you find something you love and are willing to sacrifice other things for, it's probably worth it.

"The day-to-day reality isn't the same as the early excitement, and you have to know what you're getting into," Lake warns. He says this is hard to understand when you're really young, which is why you need outside support.

A contemporary of Lake's who also worked at Maxnet, Alastair Johnson, is more cautious about starting your career early.

Johnson started working with networks and the internet even earlier than Lake, at the age of 13. He's enjoyed a high-flying career after Maxnet, and is now Alcatel-Lucent's chief architect for the North and South-East Asia Solution Architecture Group. Stationed in Singapore, Johnson is 26 this year and travels extensively throughout the Asia-Pacific, working for large telcos in the area.

He agrees with Lake that if there's something you have a burning mad desire to do, you should. At the same time, you need understanding parents and mentors to keep you on the ground, Johnson says.

"I believe strongly that experience is worth more than education when it comes to achieving things," Johnson says.

Some people he's worked with have degrees but can't get things done, whereas others like him without formal education do, and become corporate high-flyers, especially in tech companies, according to Johnson.

But there are some real disadvantages to missing out on formative years, Johnson warns. Education is more important than it seems at the time, he says. "You have to prove yourself more than your colleagues in mega corporations if you don't have an education background, and there are career glass ceilings," Johnson says.

Getting visas overseas is also that much harder without formal education, Johnson adds.

He, too, is unsure what he'd tell kids who are now in the same situation he was in. "Having lived through it [an early career start], it may not be the best idea," Johnson admits. On the other hand, he doubts that he'd have been anywhere near as successful had he stuck with school, and thinks perhaps he worked harder to make up for the lack of education.

One thing that wasn't obvious to Johnson at the time was that, especially the high school years, would've helped him to build relationships better, both personally and professionally. "I've burnt some friendships and business relationships because of that," Johnson says candidly.