16-Year-Old Dropout Is CEO of Company Potentially Worth Millions

let's face it typical teenagers are juggling school sports and socializing with varying degrees of success tonight we meet a 16 year old who's got more in common with venture capitalists and complex algorithms than guidance counselors and algebra here's abc's rebecca jarvis from the first check of the phone to a quick mess of the hair 16 year old ben pasternak's morning routine seems pretty normal but he's anything but ordinary hey guys my name is ben passanak i'm the ceo of plug you heard that right the australian teen is a tech tycoon this was lots of bugs we had before we launched his brainchild is a new app called flog which makes buying and selling items within your social network as simple as swiping right think tinder meets ebay he has already locked down enough seed money that he dropped out of high school and left his home in australia including his parents to move to new york city hoping to become his generations mark zuckerberg and he had a little bit of a head start he became a youtube celebrity at just 11 years old with these unboxing videos right now i'm recording with the front facing camera his first app success at 15 the game impossible rush even beat out favorites like starbucks and vine i had two games that were both uh like number one trending apps like everywhere in the world being ceo at 16 has already made ben a bit of a celebrity i was just in bed one morning and like my phone like buzzed and boom justin bieber is now following me on twitter unfortunately don't follow justin bieber back but you know he follows me and there are some other perks he lives alone which means a lot of freedom but this ceo still has to report to his mom hi what's up does he have a curfew on the weekend i have a bit of a curfew during the week so the curfew is supposed to be eight o'clock mom and dad who are here visiting from sydney weren't always sold on the idea what was that like as parents let's just imagine it doesn't pan out he's not gonna go back to high school is he both of us at university educated so for our son not to finish school and then going to university is a big deal so i think the deal was like we said let's go to america and see if you get funding and then we can talk about it and unfortunately he got funding unfortunately when he said he was going i just thought okay let him go and you know see how he goes in silicon valley and off he went and he kind of came home with this enormous sack of money an enormous sack of money sounds like a good deal we simply cannot let our competition be nuttier than we are and now much like macaulay culkin's pint-sized ceo and richie rich the kid is the boss see he knows it among all the adults his chief employee this 30 year old what did you think when you found out that you were going to be the ceo of a company and your ceo and founder was 16. it was kind of a developing process so by the time that happened i'd really come to terms with it what's the most 16 year old thing he's done in since you guys have worked together i think consistently most 16 year old thing he does is he forgets to eat but his teenage tendencies not a problem for his lead investor full disclosure as one of your investors i've actually heard from some teenagers interested in me looking at their apps i think that you are definitely an inspiration everybody wants you to succeed to get to that level means more funding is needed today ben and mike are meeting with a potential investor for flog there's a lot on the line we got a meeting in here right now really excited hope it goes well what he said truth is most apps fail but ben has a lot of confidence that he can build flog into the next billion dollar empire in the grand scheme of things how big of an idea is flog versus facebook or instagram i wouldn't even compare to facebook or instagram i would compare to amazon or jet so you think it could actually be as significant as one of those companies if it lives up to the full potential well it's the if that's the big question there i mean amazon and you know jet is itself an upstart uh they've got retail pretty dominated and i look at flog as a way to kind of improve upon something like craigslist how do you stay humble in all of this it's a lot for someone as young as you yeah well i mean like everyone's like going hyped up like at what i've achieved but like for me i feel like i'm just getting started so i don't even like feel anything to brag about or whatever it is you don't feel anything to brag about not really i mean like in spite of the fact that you came home with a big bag of money well i mean you know it's bigger than a big bag of money like 10 big bags of money like that's a lot sound familiar a million dollars isn't cool you know what's cool you a billion dollars channeling his favorite film the social network about another young ceo do you ever think about wanting to be more like mark mark zuckerberg not really i mean like he's too smart he's too smart yep you don't think you're as smart as mark zuckerberg i do not smart enough to get himself here and he seems to have plenty of hustle to spare we should have a competition okay what's our competition how about this if i get the next shot i get one percent of flog yeah totally totally okay that was just three billion dollars like three billion dollars out the door you lost it for nightline i'm rebecca jarvis playing pickup against a budding tech guru

Channel: ABC News

Views: 12,754,243

Rating: 4.841753 out of 5

Keywords: Ben Pasternak, Ben Pasternak interview, flogg, flogg app, flogg CEO, CEO, Tinder, Social Media, ebay, used goods, vintage, kid CEOs, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurs, Shark Tank, selling, buying, impossible rush, starbucks, teen tycoon, Ben Pasternak unboxing, Ben Pasternak youtube, flogg interview, investor meeting, seed money, starting a business, making an app, app funding, instagram, facebook, amazon, jet, ImpossibleRush

Id: jAMZXv7TpUc

Length: 6min 5sec (365 seconds)

Published: Wed May 11 2016