As serial entrepreneurs, commerce is nothing new to us (Russell, Andrey, and David). Over the years, it feels like we’ve seen every obstacle a startup can face and came up with every creative solution. One thought nagged us, though: why didn’t we learn about these obstacles/solutions earlier – a lot earlier. So we decided to teach business to the “earliest” crowd you can think of – kids. To do that, we’re creating a comic book that teaches kids entrepreneurship. It’s called My First Startup and is live on Kickstarter right now. Why a comic book? Because it’s fun and accessible to kids. It also doesn’t hurt that we run a custom comic book company (Your Comic Story), so we are in the perfect position to create a comic book for kid entrepreneurs.
So is it just a fun story? Sure, the adventure of the protagonists, Tanya and Kevin, as they each try to create own business is a lot of fun for the kids. Yet, in the fun of it all, the kids also pick up important lessons and skills, like time-management, decision-making, responsibility for own success, creative problem solving, and much more. And a big bonus in the Kickstarter campaign is to get a helping hand from key business partners in the form of free business cards and more. In fact, Shopify is one of the partners offering a special discount to the backers of My First Startup’s Kickstarter.
The best part about creating My First Startup was the reaction from the kids. From our consultations with psychologists, economists, and entrepreneurs, we knew that the comic book would be interesting and useful. And still we were absolutely floored by how much kids loved it. The most amazing part was how they immediately grasped the lessons about, for example, the need to get a food vendor’s license. There is obviously a brilliant generation with revolutionary ideas about changing the world. With a little encouragement and guidance, we can help them turn their dreams into reality, teaching them how to be responsible for own success in the process. My First Startup is the first step to get kids there.
Visit our Kickstarter campaign page at: http://kck.st/1MzVMc8.
