US student, 15, is tech millionaire

SINGAPORE - The big names in technology started early. Steve Jobs was 21 when he started Apple Computers. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook after his sophomore year in college.

At 15, Jaylen Bledsoe has plenty of time to join those illustrious ranks.

The high school student from the US state of Missouri has turned his tech start-up into a multi-million-dollar venture, reported Mail Online.

And he did that without missing class.

He founded Bledsoe Technologies, an information technology consulting company, when he was just 12 years old. His firm helps companies with website design, graphics and other technology consulting services, KTVI-TV reported.

Jaylen started with two employees and now has about 150 contract employees.

His start-up is now worth about US$3.5 million (S$4.8 million).

Said his father, Curtis: "I don't see many eighth graders do the things that he does, but it's all his doing. I'm very proud of him."

Gifted

Jaylen credits a web design class, offered as a part of his school's gifted education programme, as the foundation for his business.

He told KTVI-TV: "There's nothing you can do as a minor that will shoot you down for too long. Because you're young, you can always jump back up and keep going."

He said he will be working with hotels for his next project, creating a mobile app that lets customers check in online and use their phones to unlock their rooms.

He wants to attend undergraduate school at Vanderbilt University and then go to Harvard for his graduate degree. He is now at Mary Institute & St. Louis Country Day School, a private school.

While on vacation in Florida, he purchased $200 worth of textbooks on hypertext mark-up language (HTML) and hypertext preprocessor (PHP) code to help him expand his knowledge, Patch reported last year.

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