One has made a fortune from selling football goals, while another began on his journey to fortune by hacking his school’s computer network.
Today, they rank among Britain’s wealthiest young entrepreneurs.
Here are five of the youngsters bitten by the money bug who appear on this year’s Sunday Times Rich list…
Sports fan Alex Loven began his Wrexham-based business Net World Sports in 2009, and now sells more than 100,000 football goals a year with sales of nearly £20million in 2016-2017
Name: ALEX LOVEN (aged 30)
Company: NET WORLD SPORTS
Worth: £55million (in 2016-17)
The man behind sporting equipment firm Net World Sports has emerged as the UK’s wealthiest young entrepreneur on the Sunday Times Rich List.
Sports fan Alex Loven began his Wrexham-based business in 2009, and now sells more than 100,000 football goals a year with sales of nearly £20million in 2016-2017.
It has helped make the 30-year-old worth £55million, up £28million from the year before.
Mr Loven’s first job was at a builder’s merchants when he was 17, where he got paid £4.50 an hour. However, since the age of 13, his hobby had been selling sports equipment.
The inspiration for starting up Net World Sports came when he bought a cricket bat on eBay for £60.
He found out that they actually cost just £6 to make, so he bought ten more, sold them for £60 each – and his business was born, he told Metro last month.
Name: JACK CATOR (age 29)
Company: Privax (firm behind online privacy service Hide My Ass)
Worth: £45million
Up next on the list is Jack Cator, the chief executive and founder of Privax, the company behind online privacy service HideMyAss.com which was acquired by AVG Technologies in 2015.
Mr Cator has held steady with wealth of £45 million.
Jack Cator, worth £45m, is the chief executive and founder of Privax, the company behind online privacy service HideMyAss.com which was acquired by AVG Technologies in 2015
He was just 16 when, in 2005, he became frustrated this his secondary school in Norfolk, put a block on its network to stop pupils visiting music and games websites.
To get around this, he hacked the system and used a VPN (virtual private network) – which allows users to surf the internet privately, and anonymously, via a remote server.
However, he was dissatisfied with the quality of VPNs he found, as they were too difficult to use and had loads of adverts, so he set up his own and Hide My Ass was born.
Joshua Stevens, worth £30 million, owns and runs One Retail Group. He came in third and is a new entry on the Sunday Times Rich List for young entrepreneurs
Name: JOSHUA STEVENS (age 29)
Company: ONE RETAIL GROUP
Worth: £30million
Joshua Stevens, worth £30 million, came in third and is a new entry on the Sunday Times Rich List for young entrepreneurs.
Mr Stevens owns and runs One Retail Group, which is made up of six consumer brands including outdoor equipment label Active Era and Pro Breeze household appliances.
The 29-year-old owns the entirety of his Hampstead-based business which booked profits of £3.3 million on sales of nearly £14 million last year.
Mr Stevens grew up in London and went to Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School in Elstree.
At the age of 14, he started buying mobile phones from China – and so began an import business from his bedroom, where he developed his skills in dealing with suppliers around the world.
After graduating from Warwick University with a degree in Business and Computing, he became a bond and equities trader in the City of London.
Two years later, he realised he really wanted to run his own business.
‘It dawned on me that I didn’t want to work for anyone. I wanted to do what I loved most which was manufacture, import and sell physical products,’ he told London Loves Business.
Mr Stevens was 24 when he decided to make use of all his early business experience.
He founded multinational retailer One Retail Group in 2013 with a portfolio of lifestyle, personal care and home appliance brands.
Tom Makin (above) is one of the children of JD Sports co-founder David Makin. Tom and his sister Amy Mason each own a stake of nearly 7.5% in the Footasylum chain of shops
Names: AMY MASON (age 29) and TOM MAKIN (28)
Company: FOOTASYLUM
Worth: £25million combined
A sibling team ranked fourth on the young entrepreneurs list, worth £25 million.
Amy Mason, 29, and Tom Makin, 28, are children of JD Sports co-founder David Makin, and each own a stake of nearly 7.5 per cent in the Footasylum chain of shoe and sportswear shops.
Footasylum has a market value of £165 million and more than 65 stores.
The company, which makes sportswear for 16-to-24-year-olds, was set up by David Makin and John Wardle in 2005 and sells a mix of own-branded and third party clothing such as Nike and Calvin Klein.
Popular in-house lines Kings Will Dream, Glorious Gangsta and Gym King also sell a range of apparel, footwear and accessories, at prices up to £75.
David Makin, with his son Tom, watching a Man City v Sheffield match in 1998. Tom and Amy are worth a joint £25million
The youngest person to make the cut is 19-year-old Akshay Ruparelia who set up the Harrow-based estate agent Doorsteps selling properties for as little as £99.
He used a £7,000 loan from his family and now employs more than 25 people, with about 2,000 properties on the books.
Mr Ruparelia is worth £16 million, tying in seventh place.
Akshay Ruparelia, who is worth £16million, set up the Harrow-based estate agent Doorsteps selling properties for as little as £99
Mr Ruparelia – nicknamed Alan Sugar by his friends – set up his online estate agency while still at sixth form.
In the early days of doorsteps.co.uk, he hired a call centre service to answer his company switchboard while he was in class and rang clients back after the school bell rang.
At the same time, he was also studying for exams at Queen Elizabeth High School in Barnet, north London, and still managed to get five A’Levels, three at A* and two A grades in maths, economics, politics, history and financial studies.
Meanwhile at home, Mr Ruparelia was responsible for caring for his parents.
Speaking on This Morning last year, he said taking on the responsibility at a young age had helped him improve his time management and other skills essential to growing a business.
The confident teenager is on a mission to put traditional High Street estate agents out of business because they charge thousands of pounds in commission to sell a house and he can do it for just £99.
Robert Watts, the compiler of The Sunday Times Rich List, said: ‘If you’re good enough you’re old enough.
‘Several of these entrepreneurs cut their teeth while still in their teens and were born after the first Rich List was published in 1989.
‘Their stories underline how GCSEs, A-levels and degrees are not the only route to success.’
‘Technology has made it is easier than ever before for young men and women to start up their own company.
‘A laptop, mobile, imagination and determination can be all you need to build a strong business – and one that can now attract customers from all over the world,’ Mr Watts added.
The full 2018 Sunday Times Rich List will be published on Sunday, May 13.