Silicon Valley is famed for being home to youthful entrepreneurs. Usually that means people in their 20s or 30s, but some, like Anshul Samar, haven’t even made it out of their teens yet.

Samar is the 14 year old CEO of Elementeo, an educational gaming startup. The company’s eponymous first game has just begun shipping, following its development by a team of artists around the world. The basic idea behind Elementeo is to combine chemistry facts with fantasy in a board-based card game. Samar runs the company out of his home in the Bay Area.

Now that the game is available (it can be bought here, for $24.95), the company will work on marketing it and creating versions for other age groups. Samar is also looking for angel investors to help support Elementeo’s development.

An Excerpt from the interview:

VB: And the money issue? You said your dad helped out. Could a kid with no money do the same?

AS: When I was in 6th grade, I applied for a grant. I didn’t even ask my dad for anything. The California Association for the Gifted gave me $500. It was like my pre-, pre- seed funding. That $500 is what got me going for the next two years. It would have been very hard to start this without someone trusting me, a 13 year old, with $500.

But it’s true that if you don’t have money, it’s hard to do anything. That’s actually one of my personal goals, as an entrepreneur. There are a lot of youth in the world with an idea. They don’t have someone to believe in them, and they don’t have the money to do it. A lot of people out there don’t have encouragement. I want to give $500, $1,000, $2,000 grants to youth around the world.

Via VentureBeat

ABOUT THE AUTHOR —

One foot in the boardroom and the other in a discotheque, he is neither a stranger to a SWOT analysis nor electro house. A young person with big ideas, Michael has already helped brands such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, NBC, and Target achieve success through insightful strategy (keeping it real) and inspired creative vision (holding them down). Witnessing an emerging class of young people around him creating ideas and products that compete on the world stage, Michael along with partner in crime Marissa Shrum thought to start If We Ran It to give additional momentum to the movement.

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