Ask HN: Is there any legal way for a young developer to make money?

Somewhere in the late '90's, a 13 year old dutch boy made a website for a school assignment. The website was nothing more than a chart comparing rates of cellphone operators. His parents thought it would be a good learning experience, so they signed the contracts for hosting et al for him.

A couple of years down the road Ben Woldring (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Woldring) is one of the youngest self-made millionaires in the country.

So, get your parents to sign up for hosting, adsense, appstore, etc. and code away. By the time you're old enough to legally sign your own contracts you'll know so much of doing business (whether your business thrived or failed) your experience will prove to be a big asset.

"I understand that I should be focusing on improving my skills, living my life, etc. I am." Why should you?

I'm 17 and also in High School and have found starting tech companies/working on projects great at this age. I think you're coming at this thinking that you won't be respected and you'll have problems launching a startup or working on projects at this age.

I'd say in many ways it's much better to do so now. You have the opportunity to learn, the best way to 'Improve your Skills' and learn is to launch startups/test things out. It's both a unique learning opportunity and chance to do anything someone a few years older can do.

I've never been treated any differently to anyone else. I've been to numerous events, meetups and meetings over the last few years and have found it refreshing to be treated like anyone else there. It's actually taught me a lot as well. People don't care that you're younger, even when I have to speak to someone personally in business. The point being that you're in the position that you can do anything you want, whether it be something for fun, a niche product or something with a big vision.

Don't let policies stop you, you'd be surprised at the amount you can do under 18.

This is me, if you want to talk more: http://twitter.com/andrewbrackin

Some things you should look into:

http://mlgen.com which is amazing as it's full of both hugely successfully young entrepreneurs and some doing amazing things in small niches. I've also met loads of like minded individuals who share their experience and help me connect with people I may want to meet.

http://teensintech.com is another cool site with a pretty great team of folks.

Do you find it a problem getting into events ? - I was speaking to someone a while back who was complaining that he couldn't get into a lot of startup events as they had open bars/free drinks so had to operate a 18+ policy.

Sorry back. I find it a problem sometimes, some of my friends got into one through the back/sneaked in. Never really the events just the after parties to be honest.

It's not very often that I have a problem as if it's quite a big after party (bouncers/staff from establishment run the door) they rarely expect a 17 year old to be going to a startup event after party.

Obviously none of this is a deterrent to starting anything.

I was 12 when I was a freelance web developer, and thankfully I didn't read any fine print when signing up for hosting/domains! :) This was 2003 (yeah, I'm still young). The biggest challenge for me was being female.

There are other means to get attention without going to fancy drinking events. There are lots of meetups and conferences where anyone can go. Go to those and meet people!

As for submitting your apps, not sure what you can do there except get older :) I had to wait to get older in order to become more credible - and also wait for females to not be perceived as idiots in the field.

As long as you have your parents permission that's fine you can fill in all the forms (with their details) and press the buttons, etc. on their behalf. That's not a problem, you're just a conduit/proxy for your parents as far as the legal stuff is concerned.

Google Adsense even specifically suggest this approach:

http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en...

Look into a home server, you can just buy a second hand laptop and leave it always on next to the router. You can get student debit cards from a young age, it varies a lot but can be as low as 14 apparently, which should work with Paypal. If you can get your running costs down, just keep learning.

I already have a VPS. I've never heard of this comapny shutting down a minor, but I have heard that about credit card processors.

I'm wondering the same thing, I'm heading towards my GCSEs and would like to go to events, and earn revenue from what I create.

Not suggesting you do the same, but in the 90's I was running adult sites making a bundle starting at age 15. All I needed was a checking account and PO Box, -- I'm pretty sure anyone making less than a million are so a year online is never going to stir up questions of any sort -- no one will ever know.