Meet the 14yo entrepreneur who’s already launched 2 businesses

0:00:06 Alright, this episode is special because it’s for the kids. You see, I have a friend named Val. Val’s been on the podcast.
0:00:13 Val has built a bunch of really big businesses. And because I’m close to Val, I became friends with his son. His son’s name is Isaac.
0:00:18 And he’s one of the most impressive people I know, not just kids.
0:00:22 So Isaac is 13 years old. And over the past couple years,
0:00:28 he’s built businesses and web apps and things like that that have made one and two thousand dollars a day.
0:00:35 And I thought that he was just amazing, even though he’s, you know, a kid, his insights are pretty ridiculous.
0:00:39 And his maturity is ridiculous. And I felt inspired whenever I’ve been able to hang out with him.
0:00:43 And so we thought we’d do kind of a fun episode where we had him on the podcast, Sean and I did.
0:00:48 And we asked him all types of questions about his business, about how he thinks.
0:00:54 And I think it’ll be fun in like 10 years to look back on this and be like, what was Isaac when he was younger compared to when he was older
0:00:59 and probably a lot more successful. So give this episode a listen.
0:01:02 I dig it, man. I like these. I like hearing from young guys like who are in the thick of it.
0:01:08 And let me know. I’m on Twitter at TheSampar. If you like these kind of like children-esque episodes,
0:01:12 then maybe we’ll do more of them when we’ll find some young guys doing some really interesting stuff.
0:01:13 So give it a listen and let me know.
0:01:26 So, Isaac, I wanted to have you on because I’m friends with your father.
0:01:31 And he’s been telling me for about two or three years some of the stuff that you’re working on.
0:01:34 And you started working on this, I think, when you were 12, a bunch of different apps.
0:01:39 And I couldn’t believe what you were doing. And I told Sean about it, but Sean doesn’t entirely know.
0:01:41 Wait, wait, Isaac, how old are you?
0:01:42 14.
0:01:46 All right. I think you’re the youngest guest ever to come on the podcast. So congratulations.
0:01:47 Thank you.
0:01:53 You’re 14 years old. And are you like, I’m 14 years old. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a businessman.
0:01:55 I’m a ninth grader. What do you call yourself?
0:02:01 I guess you could call me like an entrepreneur. But really, just like a ninth grader.
0:02:04 Yeah, I like that entrepreneur and comma ninth grader.
0:02:05 Yeah, I know that.
0:02:10 Okay, well, talk about first about Cookie Duck. And then we got to talk about this new one.
0:02:14 But you need to, and I want you to brag. I know you’re probably not comfortable with bragging,
0:02:15 but it’s okay to brag here.
0:02:17 I want you to brag to Sean about Cookie Duck.
0:02:25 Okay. So Cookie Duck, it started when I was around like 10, where we had computer time at like school.
0:02:31 We had free time on the computers and the games were always, they were always blocked on the computers, right?
0:02:38 So what I wanted to do was I wanted to create like a website that allowed me to play games at school in our free time.
0:02:44 So I would just start like building little parts of code, like putting little games on this website.
0:02:48 And after a while, right, just like me and my friends are playing it.
0:02:55 Then when COVID came around, what happened was everyone got their Chromebooks and then it just started spreading like wildfire.
0:03:01 So by the 7th grade already, we had like over 4,000 people playing on it in like 30 minutes.
0:03:08 And your father told me that you just told a few friends and you could see would use or one of you guys would use Google Analytics or something.
0:03:14 And you’re like, all right, at this school on Long Island, like 90% of the 1,000-person school is using it.
0:03:20 Oh, shoot. We just saw that another school just found out about it because now like 30 miles away, there’s a whole another 1,000. Is that right?
0:03:23 Yeah. So it started out like a couple of people at East school.
0:03:31 Other than before you knew it, like the whole school was already on it because it’s like rare to find a website that’s on block on the Chromebooks.
0:03:39 All right, let’s take a quick break because I want to talk to you about some new stuff that HubSpot has.
0:03:44 Now, they let me freestyle this ad here. So I’m going to actually tell you what I think is interesting.
0:03:49 So they have this thing called the Fall Spotlight showing all the new features that they released in the last few months.
0:03:52 And the ones that stood out to me were Breeze Intelligence.
0:03:56 I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but if you’re in HubSpot and you have, let’s say, a customer there,
0:03:59 you can just basically add intelligence to that customer.
0:04:04 They estimate a revenue for that company, how many employees it has, maybe their email address or their location.
0:04:06 If they’ve ever visited your page or not.
0:04:12 And so you can enrich all of your data automatically with one click using this thing called Breeze Intelligence.
0:04:17 They actually acquired a really cool company called Clearbit and it’s become Breeze, which is great because now it’s built in.
0:04:19 I always hated using two different tools to try to do this.
0:04:20 Now it’s all in one place.
0:04:24 And so all the data you had about your customers now just got smarter.
0:04:25 So check it out.
0:04:27 You can actually see all the stuff they released.
0:04:28 It’s a really cool website.
0:04:32 Go to hubspot.com/spotlight to see them all and get the demos yourself.
0:04:36 Back to this episode.
0:04:37 And so you got a bunch of games on here.
0:04:39 You got like Temple Run, Subway servers.
0:04:42 So you have real games that people know about.
0:04:46 So do you rebuild the games or these are their games that you just embedded?
0:04:51 You just do the cookie ducking, the ability to get to make it so that it’s not going to be blocked.
0:04:52 How do you actually do that?
0:04:54 So most of the games are just embedded.
0:04:56 So like it’s unblocked on their end.
0:04:57 Okay.
0:05:01 So you just kind of iframe it or something in there and then you figured out how to make it
0:05:03 not get blocked.
0:05:04 How hard was it to not get blocked?
0:05:10 So once it gets blocked, what you really need to do is you have to create like new domains
0:05:14 for each to get around like the blocking system.
0:05:15 And so is this a business?
0:05:16 Does it make money?
0:05:18 What’s going on with cookie duck?
0:05:24 So what happened was is that whenever you make enough links, you can’t monetize all of them
0:05:28 because each link isn’t big enough to be monetized, I guess.
0:05:35 So in the beginning when the main cookie duck.com was popular, it was making around 1500 a day
0:05:36 at its peak.
0:05:43 So but eventually, you know, that link got blocked and you can’t really monetize the other ones.
0:05:49 It’s also because on the Chromebooks, they have like a lot of anti block, anti tracker.
0:05:51 So it’s really hard to monetize.
0:05:54 What, uh, how was it making money just through Google ads?
0:05:55 Ads.
0:05:56 Yeah.
0:05:59 How much, how long did this last and how much in total did it make?
0:06:03 I mean, the peak lasted around a day, but I don’t really have like a total number.
0:06:07 But it, it dropped off pretty quickly because it got blocked.
0:06:11 So you, and you did this when you were how old?
0:06:11 When I was 12.
0:06:12 All right.
0:06:17 So you’re 12 years old and you might have made, would it be safe to say you made at least
0:06:20 more than 10 grand doing this little hobby project, right?
0:06:22 That money hits your bank account.
0:06:22 What do you think?
0:06:23 And what do you use it?
0:06:24 Do you go spend it?
0:06:25 Do you throw a party?
0:06:27 Do you invest in the SP 500 stocks and bonds?
0:06:28 What are you doing with this?
0:06:29 I didn’t really use it.
0:06:33 I mean, I did like open a little stock investing account, but not.
0:06:35 I didn’t use it really.
0:06:41 So it’s just sitting in a bank account?
0:06:42 Yeah.
0:06:43 Oh my gosh.
0:06:47 And when you’re doing this, is your father teaching you how to, I mean, I don’t know how
0:06:47 to code.
0:06:50 So you’re smarter than me by a lot and probably many other aspects,
0:06:55 but definitely when it comes to this, uh, who was teaching you how to do this?
0:06:58 I mean, for this web, I did go to a coding school, but for this website,
0:07:00 I basically made it all by myself.
0:07:02 And you just use like a YouTube or something?
0:07:02 Yeah.
0:07:04 Google YouTube.
0:07:06 That’s amazing.
0:07:07 All right.
0:07:09 And so Sean, he, so he did this cookie thing.
0:07:11 His dad was like bragging to me.
0:07:12 He was like, dude, check out my son.
0:07:13 Look what he’s doing.
0:07:15 And I’m like, I didn’t believe how great it was doing.
0:07:19 And then about three months ago, his father sends me this other website.
0:07:21 It’s called price satellite.com.
0:07:25 And what’s crazy, Isaac, is, uh, you’re 14 now.
0:07:27 You go to price satellite.com.
0:07:30 I understand why you did this gaming website.
0:07:31 Makes total sense.
0:07:33 Sean, it sounds like you’re typing.
0:07:35 Read what price satellite.com is.
0:07:39 Save big on luxury goods while traveling.
0:07:44 So you have Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, there’s all these brands.
0:07:48 So the, the, the gist of the website, I believe is like, it tells you if you want to get a Dior
0:07:51 purse or whatever they make in a different country, it tells you the difference in conversion
0:07:56 rates. And so it’s like, if you are in France, it’s 30% cheaper to buy this same product in
0:07:57 France versus America.
0:08:00 Isaac, why are you helping people save big while traveling?
0:08:05 The, the reason I basically did it is basically whenever like we travel, we always notice
0:08:06 how much cheaper it is.
0:08:09 So I, I saw that as like a blank, um, space.
0:08:13 And I think it would be good for SEO because you have every product name.
0:08:15 Right. And you’re, you could rank on each one.
0:08:19 So it’s like a good opportunity for views.
0:08:22 Hold on. How do you know what’s a good SEO opportunity?
0:08:25 What eighth grade class taught you that? How do you know that?
0:08:30 I just, I just looked and there’s not really like a competitor to this already.
0:08:33 It’s pretty much a blank area. No one really compiled it.
0:08:38 So where are you getting the data for like the prices per country?
0:08:40 Is it, is it all from their local site?
0:08:45 And then you just basically compile and transcript and basically do the foreign exchange,
0:08:49 take into account the VAT, VAT savings, again, you make it all equalized basically.
0:08:53 Yeah. So I, I got the data off like the official website and then I on cat,
0:08:57 like put together all the VAT data along with that.
0:09:00 Wow. This is amazing. Are people using this? Is this like out there yet?
0:09:04 No, right now it’s pretty small, but hopefully we’re expanding.
0:09:11 I love how you use we. I think that’s exactly what I did when it, when it was always just me,
0:09:17 it was always a week. What, how, how many people are coming to the site today?
0:09:22 Right now it’s around 30, 50 a day, but it’s been expanding pretty quickly. It’s pretty new.
0:09:25 And that’s from search.
0:09:29 Yeah. Do you have backlinks to it now? Or is it just because of the, there’s not,
0:09:31 there’s no one else ranking?
0:09:35 I don’t really have a backlinks just yet. I mean, I’m working on it,
0:09:38 trying to get like the name out there, but I don’t really have backlinks.
0:09:43 So Isaac, where does a guy like you, you’re 14 years old and you’re kind of like an internet
0:09:47 hacker. You’re basically building cool stuff, that little projects that are fun for you.
0:09:50 Where do you meet other people that are doing what you’re doing? Is there like,
0:09:55 is it discord groups? Are there, is it Reddit forums? Where do you find other people that are
0:09:59 similar to you? Because I’m guessing in your school, there’s probably not too many people
0:10:02 that are as far along as you are in terms of being an entrepreneur.
0:10:06 I mean, quite honestly, I don’t really like, I don’t really network with
0:10:10 other people that do this type of stuff. But I learned from my,
0:10:15 I guess mostly YouTube tutorials on like, which way to go for like different sub topics,
0:10:18 like SEO and all that, like coding.
0:10:23 I went Sean to Isaac’s bar mitzvah. And it was tech.
0:10:24 Did he gift you money?
0:10:29 It was the fanciest party. It was the nicest party I’ve ever been to.
0:10:36 And it was tech themed. And so each table had like an Apple logo or I think there was like
0:10:39 a Sony table. Like there was like, it was all named for tech companies. So clearly,
0:10:43 he’s like passionate about this stuff. Do your friends think you’re weird?
0:10:45 Like, or do they even know what you’re doing?
0:10:48 I mean, they know about the website. They just know it exists.
0:10:50 Right. They’re not buying Louis Vuitton bags.
0:10:56 So to you. And who do you look up to? Who like, if you’re a teenager like yourself,
0:10:59 you’re trying to be a great entrepreneur or you’re building cool things.
0:11:03 Who do you look up to? Who do you think is doing awesome stuff in the world?
0:11:09 I mean, I really got like my inspiration for doing like trying to build some stuff for my dad.
0:11:10 Like, that’s really where it came.
0:11:13 And what is he, what does he teach or what does he tell you?
0:11:15 Like, what kind of guidance does he give you?
0:11:19 Well, he basically just encourages for me to like not think about what I want to do now,
0:11:21 but think about like the future.
0:11:30 And I have, I have a photo of Isaac when, man, you must have been four years old in this picture.
0:11:34 I’ll ask your father and you if we, if we could put this in the video,
0:11:39 but you’re, it looks like you’re four years old and you are putting together a PC.
0:11:41 Like you literally have a screwdriver and you’re assembling a PC.
0:11:42 Do you know what photo I’m talking about?
0:11:45 Yeah. Yeah. I was around, that was for my eighth birthday,
0:11:48 because my dad wouldn’t let me just buy a computer.
0:11:50 He wanted me to like actually build my own computer.
0:11:55 So I was watching like YouTube tutorials before I asked him if I could build my computer.
0:11:58 I was watching YouTube, YouTube tutorials on how to build a computer,
0:12:00 like what parts to pick out.
0:12:02 And for my birthday, he let me do it.
0:12:03 This is amazing.
0:12:04 Isn’t it Sean?
0:12:07 Like it’s, it’s, it’s fun to hear, hear him talk about this stuff.
0:12:10 Isaac, you’ve inspired me today, man.
0:12:12 You, you’re doing very cool stuff.
0:12:14 And you are so far ahead of the game.
0:12:17 You know, I was still picking boogers when I was 14 years old.
0:12:20 So I can’t believe the type of stuff that you’re doing.
0:12:22 And I’m hope that there’s people out there who are listening to their kids
0:12:25 or maybe some young people that are listening to this that will kind of use
0:12:28 this as a bit of a green light to build more stuff.
0:12:31 And we should make like a group, you know, Isaac, the only thing I would,
0:12:35 I would recommend for you is you said, you don’t really have like kind of a friends
0:12:38 group or peer group of other people who are doing this.
0:12:39 I think you should do that, man.
0:12:43 I think you should find the other kind of 14 to 17 year olds that are doing
0:12:47 really interesting stuff on the internet and just be in a discord and a group chat together
0:12:51 because you will all get smarter faster and you’ll all kind of learn from each other’s
0:12:54 projects versus just being in your own silo on your, on your own.
0:12:55 That’s my only advice for you.
0:12:58 Not that you ask, but I think that that would be good for you.
0:13:01 Maybe we can make it be the MFM junior discord.
0:13:03 And anybody who listens to this can go, can go join it.
0:13:05 Isaac, do you have a goal?
0:13:08 Like, is there like, are you just having fun now?
0:13:10 Or is it like, by the time I’m 18, I want to be doing this.
0:13:12 By the time I’m 40, I want to be doing this.
0:13:13 Like, do you think of it that way?
0:13:16 Or is it just that I want to learn it a code and this is a cool way to learn.
0:13:21 My goal right now is just to like progress my, what I, on my price satellite
0:13:24 to like get like at least a million views a month.
0:13:25 Like that’s really my goal.
0:13:28 And I’m going to progress from there.
0:13:35 By the way, Sam, you know that meme that’s going viral right now with the Olympics
0:13:37 with the shooter, the, the Turkish shooter.
0:13:39 That’s that’s Isaac right now.
0:13:43 My goal is to do the thing I’m doing better.
0:13:45 That’s my goal.
0:13:48 That’s how far I’m going to take this, but take this as far as I can.
0:13:48 What do you mean?
0:13:51 If price satellite gets a million views a month,
0:13:53 will that make, will that be making money?
0:13:54 What’s the plan?
0:14:01 Not only ads, but you have affiliates for places that sell these bags like second hand
0:14:05 or they sell like the real real, which sells like the new bags.
0:14:08 It’s just like a reseller platform.
0:14:11 And I can be an affiliate to those companies along with that.
0:14:15 Isn’t there a thing where people pay other people to buy it in that country
0:14:17 and then travel or ship it to them?
0:14:17 Yeah.
0:14:19 A company called like mule or donkey or something like that.
0:14:21 That was basically like, oh, it’s cheaper in Denmark.
0:14:25 So then they find somebody who’s already in Denmark to buy it on your behalf.
0:14:28 And then they’re either traveling to the United States or they ship it to you.
0:14:31 And then you, you get the discount without having to go there.
0:14:32 Yeah.
0:14:34 I’ve seen one of those websites, but I don’t,
0:14:35 I don’t really know too much about them.
0:14:37 I’ll have to look into it.
0:14:40 And by the way, why aren’t you playing with like AI and crypto and like stuff?
0:14:42 That’s like kind of the cutting edge.
0:14:43 I am definitely with AI.
0:14:46 So what are you doing with AI?
0:14:50 AI, a lot of price satellite is built on AI.
0:14:54 So first of all, like a lot of the code base, like the web scraper,
0:14:58 the back end, the front end, the styles, all, a lot of that was built off AI.
0:15:03 The categorization of products done with AI and the product descriptions.
0:15:07 I can’t do 10,000 product descriptions by myself.
0:15:10 So I really used AI for almost all of those.
0:15:14 You know, I wanted you to come on Isaac because you’re impressive,
0:15:18 but mostly because you make me feel good.
0:15:24 I like talking to you because you make me realize that life’s a lot simpler than it needs.
0:15:27 Then we often, when we grow up, kind of make it, make it out to be,
0:15:32 we make it more complicated and you, you make me happy just hearing like,
0:15:33 well, I’m just going to get a little bit better.
0:15:36 And I’m, and it’s, it’s a very wonderful, fresh mindset.
0:15:37 I appreciate you.
0:15:40 Isaac, one more thing before you go.
0:15:42 We are the ideas podcast.
0:15:44 We’re the podcast where people brainstorm business ideas
0:15:47 or ideas for products that don’t exist that they think should.
0:15:48 I am curious.
0:15:53 Do you have any other ideas maybe that you don’t have time to build right now
0:15:55 or you think would be cool?
0:15:58 Anything, it doesn’t have to be even fully, fully baked out in your head.
0:16:00 It could be kind of a half of an idea.
0:16:02 Is there anything that you’ve seen that comes to mind?
0:16:06 So with, along with AI, I feel like AI right now,
0:16:09 everyone’s trying to build like their own different app.
0:16:14 But I think that building like AI into what we already have,
0:16:16 like the messaging app, the phone app,
0:16:22 that’s really what’s going to make all AI a lot more convenient for people.
0:16:27 So instead of searching for like people places or things to like a search bar,
0:16:31 basically we just text like an AI, like, can you find me this?
0:16:34 Can you find me someone who does this like a job for me?
0:16:38 And then it will like basically call a bunch of places like maybe reservations.
0:16:40 It’ll find you like places in the area.
0:16:43 You text an AI and it’ll book for you.
0:16:48 It’ll find you times and that’s what’s going to make AI a lot more convenient for people.
0:16:49 I love it.
0:16:55 So like a what’s that bot or an iMessage bot that you could just text your AI on demand.
0:16:57 Yeah, just text the AI.
0:16:58 You’re the man.
0:16:58 You’re the man.
0:17:01 Don’t change.
0:17:01 Keep going.
0:17:05 These guys are weird.
0:17:09 No, I kept saying I make him happy.
0:17:14 We appreciate you, man.
0:17:17 Thanks for doing this and keep going.
0:17:18 You’re the man.
0:17:35 Hey, let’s take a quick break to talk about another podcast that you should check out.
0:17:37 It is called The Next Wave.
0:17:41 It’s hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands as part of the HubSpot podcast network,
0:17:44 which of course is your audio destination for business professionals like you.
0:17:47 You can catch The Next Wave with Matt Wolf and he’s talking about
0:17:50 where the puck is going with AI creators, AI technology,
0:17:52 and how you can apply it to your growing business.
0:17:53 So check it out.
0:17:57 Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcast.
0:17:59 (soft music)
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