Enrichment programs are somewhat limited to schools, sports, and camps until children reach a certain age, while earning opportunities are largely non-existent, a one-year-old known as Mighty, L.A. The startup, a kind of shop that invites young children to open a store online, aims to fill a partial void.
In fact, Mighty – formerly led by founder Ben Goldhirsh, who previously founded Good Magazine, and Dana Mauriello, who spent almost five years with ST and was a consultant at Sidewalk Labs – hopefully it will inspire the family with the pitch it runs, hopes fintech, ad tech and entertainment center. Often, the idea stems from the founders’ own experience. In this case, Goldirch, who lives in Costa Rica, began to worry about his two daughters, who attended a small, six-member school.
Since he feared they might fall behind their state counterparts, he began training them when he got home using Khan Academy among other software platforms. Yet the response from the girls was not exactly positive. “They were,” F * ck u, dad. We just finished school and now you are going to give us more schools?” Uncertain about what to do, he encouraged them to sell the bracelets they made online, drawing them to learn their math skills as well as startup capital, business plans (he forced them to write one), and marketing. She says it worked, and when she told friends about this successful “project-based learning effort,” they started asking if she could help their kids get up and run.
First forwards and Goldiehorse and Morilio – who ran a crowdfunding platform that Goldhorse invested in before joining Etts – say they are now running a still-in-beta startup that has become the home of 3,000 “CEOs” since Mighty called them. The interest is not surprising. Kids spend more time online than at any point in history. Many real-world businesses that once employed babies shrink in size.
In addition to babysitting or selling cookies in the corner, finding a job before high school is a challenge, given the Department of Labor’s Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets the minimum age for a job at 14 years (yet, many employers do more work than is appropriate for their young employees.)
