Teens’ digital start-up going global from home
A pair of teenagers are only just getting started with their digital management company, but their client list already includes a major motorsports championship and reaches around the world.
Jordie Peters, 18, and Oliver Harper, 19, spent 12 months planning their venture 38 Design, ensuring it could offer myriad digital services, from website and social media management to design, branding, video and public relations, then revved it to life in December.
Their biggest coup has been signing up Formula First NZ, but the pair are also working with race-car drivers, small businesses and individuals in New Zealand, Germany, United States and England – all out of their parents’ homes in Manawatu¯ .
Peters lives in Marton, but attended Feilding High School, where he met Harper.
They bonded over a shared love of design and computers, and hoovered up every lesson or resource on the subjects they could.
‘‘We always talked about starting some sort of tech or design business, although after we started uni we thought it might be [a while yet].’’ But opportunity knocked when Peters reconsidered his options and dropped out.
38 Digital was registered last June, but was launched in December, once they had gathered enough clients to get down to business.
Harper – still studying a bachelor of resource and environment with a minor in management at Massey University – runs the administrative side of the business. Both pitch in on the creative work, but so far Peters has taken point with the clients.
He has been a massive motorsports fan since he was a kid and worked as pit crew for professional racing teams in high school.
He was on the crew for Kiwi driver Liam Lawson when he won the 2016-17 New Zealand Formula F1600 Championship title at Manfield.
Peters leveraged his contacts from those years to get 38 Digital firing off the starting grid and word of mouth did the rest, he said.
Though he still lives with his parents, he has only spent three days at home in the past month as he’s been following clients around the Toyota Racing Series circuit.