Lessons from child-led businesses
Noah Cahoon is 14 years old and is the CEO of Paper Box Pilots, a business he and his father founded together. Lately, it has seemed stylish to announce a company started by a child – or even a teenager. Makes good reading but many have wondered, is it really a front for the parents who are running the company or did the child really start it on his or her own?
PAPER BOX PLANES
Paper Box Planes CEO Noah Cahoon and his father Brian say that they have put their heads together to create a business that made sense and offered the kind of toys they liked to play around with, to other kids. Noah and his father have built a strong small business together but as the 14-year-old puts it, his father lets Noah have the final say in the way the company does business.
Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Appearing on the ABC’s hit pitch show ‘Shark Tank’, the Cahoons were shown where Noah then aged 13, engages in a business deal with investor Kevin O”Leary, known as “Mr Wonderful” – without his father’s advice.
Noah’s father Brian has a story to tell too – that he gave up his entrepreneurial dreams to raise a family. He worked at Oracle.
“When Noah was born, I was getting my MBA. I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but when I brought home that little guy — it’s a feeling of responsibility that you have to be careful. And I never got the chance to take that risk,” he shares his story with investors. He also tells them that in his eyes, when it comes to the company, Noah is a real CEO – as real as it can get between a father and a son.
The Cahoons used to make designs for airplanes out of empty cardboard boxes when Noah was small. Later, Noah realised that they could not only start printing out designs for his six-year-old brother Milo, who is engaged as the company’s ‘Chief Fun Officer’, but they could start selling those designs to retailers.
The Cahoons believe they are in a win-win situation - Brian has the opportunity he had always wanted to be - to become an entrepreneur; the business has given his ambitious son a business education before even starting high school.
Brian says that he wanted to teach Noah that “there’s not a single path in life and that he doesn’t need to pursue a career where his main goal is to rise up a corporate ladder.”
ENTREPRENEURIA OPPORTUNITY
In the first eight months of Paper Box Pilots, the company made just US $ 7,500 in sales from their online shop and through small independent retailers; sales aside, Cahoons are happy with the hands on entrepreneurial opportunity Noah has been able to get – to be involved in sales, designing and decisionmaking.
Although investors Mak Cuban and Greiner who were full of admiration for the father son duo who came on the ABC programme looking for an investment of US $ 35,000 in return for 25 percent equity and a partnership, both felt it was not right for various reasons yet Kevin O’Leary, a grand master of child-centred businesses, who sold his children’s software The Learning Company to Mattel for almost US $ 4 billion, felt otherwise.
There were other investors interested too. But Brian let Noah take the decision and in the end, they chose to go with O’Leary with 50 percent stake and more of a mentor approach in enabling the company – and Noah – to grow.
What lessons can we learn from this? That a 14-year-old can have enough business sense, backed by his father, to take a company to the next level? How does it play out when big investment comes in and the company becomes a busy entity with a lot of work to be done?
If there’s nothing else, this kind of child-led entrepreneurship teaches us that there is nothing impossible in the world of entrepreneurship. Often the lessons you learn early are the best lessons. And as Brian so aptly puts it, life is not only about rising the corporate ladder. There are many among us who yearn for the spirit of entrepreneurship and who truly believe in starting their own company – if only they had the right blend.
All you need is the right opportunity and the right product or service mix – of course, a sense of commitment and doing your homework helps. But what does it tell us about entrepreneurship? That it is always possible to turn good and sound ideas, backed by research into thriving businesses.