Beau Jessup, a 19-year-old entrepreneur, has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars through her ingenious online service, Special Name, which helps Chinese parents choose an appropriate English name for their babies.

Finding a suitable name for a baby is a big deal in China. When picking out their child’s Chinese name, parents usually select two or three characters that have a carefully thought out meaning, but when deciding on an English name – to help them interact with native English-speakers easier – many of them struggle. That’s where 19-year-old Beau Jessup and her company, Special Name, come in. For a small fee, Special Name suggests several English names that have different traits, like honesty or ambition, associated with them. In the last three and a half years, Jessup has helped name 677,900 Chinese babies, and earned over $400,000 in the process, more than enough to cover her college expenses.

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Many children dream of becoming entrepreneurs when they grow up, but very few start as early as, Jose Adolfo Quisocala Condori, a Peruvian boy who started a children’s savings bank when he was only 7 years old. Today, his bank serves over 2,000 clients and offers various financial services.

Jose got the idea for a children’s savings bank six years ago, after noticing that many of his peers were spending their money on sweets and toys, instead of saving it for more meaningful purchases. Despite his young age, he understood that saving money and accessing the financial system were two ways that adults – like his parents – solved many of their financial and social problems, so he decided to make them available to kids as well. He then started thinking of ways that children could generate money without the help of their parents, and recycling seemed like the obvious answer. Jose was sure that he was on to something, but when he pitched his idea for a children’s bank to his teachers, he was told that a 7-year-old couldn’t handle such a project. But he proved them all wrong.

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17-year-old Brennan Agranoff started his custom sock business in middle school, with a small loan he got from his parents. He has so far sold over $1 million worth of socks online in the last four years and is now planning to get his wacky socks into retail stores as well.

Brennan came up with the idea for his custom sock company at just 13 years old. He was attending a high-school basketball game in his home town of Sherwood, Oregon, and noticed that many kids his age were wearing the same white Nike sport socks. The young entrepreneur told himself that if these plain white socks were so popular with kids, then some cool custom designs would surely be an even greater hit.

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