There once was a time when, if ambitious adolescents wanted to make
extra money, they would take on a paper route, mow lawns or shovel snow.
But no longer. These days, they're turning to a more lucrative pastime
than shoveling neighbors' walks—they're becoming Webmasters, turning to
the IT world or starting tech-based businesses.
Take Keith Peiris. He's only 13 and in the seventh grade, but as
president, founder and CEO of the Web design, e-business and marketing
company Cyberteks Design, he's already a veteran businessman, having
founded his company in June 1999.
Don't think that his company is a small, one-person operation turning
out cute little Web sites for friends and family. The company, in London,
Ontario, had $130,000 (Canadian dollars) in revenue last year and was
named as one of the top 50 Canadian Web development and services
companies. And Peiris was chosen by the Canadian Prime Minister, Joseph
Jacques Jean Chrétien, to join him and other Canadian businessmen on a
trade mission to China.
You might think that finding success at a young age would go to his
head, but Peiris is unassuming and disarmingly articulate. And he started
using computers at a very tender age.
"I started using computers when I was 3," he recalls. "When I was 9 or
so, I started learning about building Web pages. I thought it would be
really fun to do Web design and wanted to try something new."
Peiris didn't learn his skills in classes—everything he knows, he
taught himself. He taught himself Macromedia Flash, for example, by
spending 2 hours a day at it for 30 days.
A month after he started his company, he had his first client, a public
school. And the clients have been coming back ever since. Companies such
as KEWL, a hockey apparel company founded by Shayne Corson and Darcy
Tucker of the Toronto Maple Leafs, signed him up to create their site.
Peiris spends about 2 hours a day after school working with his
company, and from 2 to 10 hours on weekends.
While you might expect he would face ribbing from schoolmates, he said,
"My peers don't really care ... I keep my two lives separate." If anyone
has problems with his success at a young age, it's a few misguided adults,
not other kids, he said.
"A minority of adults say that I'm too young to be doing this or that
by doing it I'm taking money away from adults. ... My advice to other kids
wanting to do this is to ignore what adults like that say."
As to whether he'll be doing this job when he's an adult, Peiris said,
"I'd like to stay with this company when I grow up, but the field might
change. I'd like to be with whatever the next technology will be."
Given his success up to now, there's no doubt he'll be there. And by
then, he might even be starting to shave.
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