Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/08/13/branchr_mac/
16-year-old makes £1m selling ads
Little swine Join us in congratulating him
Posted in On-Prem, 13th August 2010 15:54 GMT
A 16-year-old kid from Northants has made his first million selling discount software and embedding ads in mobile applications, and aims to be making a hundred times that.
While most of us were experimenting with recreational drugs* and getting shot down in flames by the opposite sex, Christian Owens was negotiating limited-time discounts on Mac software, enabling him to sell bundles at hugely-discounted prices and bringing in £700,000 over the last two years. The South West News Service brought us the story with pictures.
The software business was Mac Box Bundle, but since then Owens has been running Branchr, a company that places adverts within mobile websites and applications. In the first year of operation Branchr has, reportedly, sold £500,000 worth of advertising, which brings the total brought in by Master Owens to well over a million quid.
Not that much of the money will still be around - the companies employ eight adults in the UK, as well as sales and technical staff in the USA. Branchr will be passing on most of the incoming revenue to those hosting the applications, while Mac Box Bundle still had to pay for the applications even at a heavily-discounted price. So while £1.2m might have passed through the businesses, there aren't any millionaires yet.
Nor is Owens resting on his laurels, simply enjoying the milestone and promising to that he'll be working on Branchr until it's worth at least £100m, which should create a millionaire or two.
But creating a turnover of more than a million is still impressive, for a 16-year-old, and we're duly impressed. No doubt Master Owens will have plenty of time for recreational drugs and the opposite sex when he's worth a hundred million, by which point both will probably be easier to obtain. ®
* We refer only to alcohol, of course.