My First Million - Meet the 14yo entrepreneur who's already launched 2 businesses

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Episode 638: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to 14-year-old founder Isaac Katayev ( https://x.com/isaackatayev ) about the startup he launched out of his 7th grade computer class.  — Show Notes:  (0:00) Cookieduck  (4:18) Making $1,500 a day at age 12 (6:19) Price Satellite  (11:08) Being peerless — Links: • Cookieduck Games - http://cookieduck.com  • Price Satellite - http://pricesatellite.com/  — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

All right, this episode is special because it's for the kids. You see, I have a friend named Val. Val's been on the podcast. Val has built a bunch of really big businesses. And because I'm close to Val, I became friends with his son. His son's name is Isaac. And he's one of the most impressive people I know, not just kids. So Isaac is 13 years old. And over the past couple years, he's built businesses and web apps and things like that that have made one and $2,000 a day. And I thought that, he was just amazing even though he's a kid his insights are pretty ridiculous and his maturity is ridiculous and I felt inspired whenever I've been able to hang out with him and so we thought we'd do kind of a fun episode where we had him on the podcast Sean and I did and we asked all types of questions about his business about how he thinks and I think it'll be fun in like 10 years to look back on this and be like what was Isaac when he was like when he was younger compared to when he was older and probably a lot more successful so give this episode a listen I dig it man I like these, I like hearing from young guys who are in the thick of it. And let me know, I'm out on

Twitter at the Sampar. If you like these kind of like children-esque episodes, and maybe we'll do more of them and we'll find some young guys doing some really interesting stuff. So give it a listen and let me know. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on. On a road, let's travel, never look. So Isaac, I wanted to have you on because I'm friends with your father. And he's been telling me for about two or three years, some of the stuff that you're working on. And you started working on this, I think when you were 12, a bunch of different apps. And I couldn't believe what you were doing. And I told Sean about it, but Sean doesn't entirely know. Wait, wait. Isaac, how old are you? 14.

All right. I think you're the youngest guest ever to come on the podcast. So congratulations. Thank you. You're 14 years old. And do you, are you like, I'm 14 years, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a businessman. I'm a ninth grader. What do you call yourself? I guess you could call me like an entrepreneur, but really, just like a ninth grader. Yeah, I like that entrepreneur and comma, ninth grader. Yeah, I'd go that. Okay. Well, talk about first about cookie duck and then we got to talk about this new one. But you need a, and I want you to brag. I know you're probably not comfortable with bragging, but it's okay to brag here. I want you to brag to Sean about cookie duck. Okay. So cookie duck, it started when I was around like 10 where we had computer time at

like school, we had free time on the computers. And the games were always, they were always blocked on the computers, right? So what I wanted to do was I wanted to create it like a website that allowed me to play games at school in our free time. So I would just start like building little parts of code, like putting little games on this website. And after a while, right, just like me and my friends were playing it. And then when COVID came around, what happened was everyone got their Chromebooks. And then it just started spreading like, wow, fire. So by the seventh grade already, we had like over 4,000 people playing on it in like 30 minutes. And your father told me that you just told a few friends and you could see he would use or one of you

guys would use Google Analytics or something. And you're like, all right, at this school in Long Island, like 90% of the thousand person school is using it. Oh, shoot. We just saw that another school just find out about it because now like 30 miles away, there's a whole another thousand. Is that right? Yeah. So it started out like a couple people at East School. Other than before you knew it, whole school was already on it. Because it's rare to find a website that's unblocked on the Chromebooks. And so you got a bunch of games on here. You got like Temple Run, Subway Service.

So you have real games that people know about. So do you rebuild the games or these are their games that you just embedded? You just do the cookie ducking, the ability to get to make it so that it's not going to be blocked. How do you actually do this? So most of the games are just embedded. So like it's unblocked on their end. Okay. So you just kind of eye frame it or something.

there and that you you figured out how to make it not get blocked. How hard was it to not get blocked? So once it gets blocked, what you really need to do is you have to create like new domains for each to get around like the blocking system. And so is this a business? Does it make money? What, what's going on with Kuki Dak? So what happened was is that whenever you make enough links, you can't monetize all of them because each link isn't big enough to be monetized, I guess. So in the beginning, when the main cookie duck.com was popular, it was making around 1,500 a day at its peak. But eventually, you know, that link got blocked and you can't really monetize the other ones. It's also because the Chromebooks, they have like a lot of anti-block, anti-tracker, so it's really hard to monetize.

How was it making money just through Google ads? As, yeah. How much, how long did this last? and how much in total did it make? I mean, the peak lasted around the day, but I don't really have like a total number, but it dropped off pretty quickly because it got blocked. So you, and you did this when you were how old?

When I was 12. All right, so you're 12 years old, and you might have made, would it be safe to say you made at least more than 10 grand doing this little hobby project, right? That money hits your bank account. What are you thinking? Do you use it?

Do you go spend it? Do you throw a party? Do you invest in the SB 500 stocks and bonds? What are you doing? this. I didn't really use it. I mean, I did open a little stock investing account, but not, I didn't use it, really. So it's just sitting in a bank account? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. And when you're doing this, is your father teaching you how to, I mean, I don't know how to code, so you're smarter than me by a lot in probably many other aspects, but definitely when it comes to

this, who was teaching you how to do this? I mean, for this web, I did go to a coding school, for this website, I basically made it all by myself. And you used like YouTube or something? Yeah. Google YouTube. That's amazing. All right. And so, Sean, he, so he did this cookie duck thing.

His dad was like bragging to me. He was like, dude, check out my son. Look what he's doing. And I'm like, I didn't believe how great it was doing. And then about three months ago, his father sends me this other website. It's called price satellite.com. Yep. And what's crazy, Isaac is you're 14 now.

You go to price satellite.com. I understand why you did this gaming website. It makes total sense. Sean, it sounds like you're typing. Read what price satellite.com is. Save big on luxury goods while traveling. So you have Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, there's all these brands. So the gist of the website, I believe, is like it tells you, if you want to get a Dior

purse or whatever they make in a different country, it tells you the difference in conversion rates. And so it's like if you are in France, it's 30% cheaper to buy this same product in France versus America. Isaac, why are you helping people save big while traveling? The reason I basically did it is basically whenever we travel, we always notice how much cheaper it is. So I saw that as like a blank space and I think it would be good for SEO because you have

every product name, right? And you could rank on each one. So it's like a good opportunity for views. Now, hold on. How do you know what's a good SEO opportunity? What eighth grade class taught you that? How do you know that? I just looked and there's not really like a competitor to this already.

It's pretty much a blank area. No one really compiled it. So where are you getting the data for like the prices per country? Is it is it all from their local site? And then you just basically compile and transcript and basically do the foreign exchange. Take into account the VAT savings. And you make it all equalized basically. Yeah.

So I got the data off like the official website. And then I like put together all the VAT. data along with that. Wow. This is amazing. Are people using this? Is this like out there yet? No, right now it's pretty small, but hopefully we're expanding.

I love how you use we. I think that's exactly what I did. When it was always just me, it was always a we. What, uh, how many people are coming to the site a day? Right now it's around 30, 50 a day, but it's been expanding pretty quickly. It's pretty new. And that's from search. Yeah.

Do you have backlinks to it now or is it just because of the, there's not, there's no one else ranking? I don't really have backlinks just yet. I mean, I'm working on it trying to get like the name out there, but I don't really have backlinks. So, Isaac, where does a guy like you, you're 14 years old and you're kind of like an internet hacker, you're basically building cool stuff, little projects that are fun for you, where do you meet other people that are doing what you're doing? Is there like, is it Discord groups? Are there, is it Reddit forums?

where do you find other people that are similar to you? Because I'm guessing in your school, there's probably not too many people that are as far along as you are in terms of being an entrepreneur. I mean, quite honestly, I don't really, like, I don't really network with other people that do this type of stuff.

But I learned from my, I guess, mostly YouTube tutorials on, like, which way to go for, like, different subtopics like SEO and all that, like coding.

I went, Sean, to Isaac's Bar Mitzvah, and it was tech. Did he give to you, Bunny? Dude, it was the fanciest party. It was the nicest party I've ever been to. And it was tech themed.

And so each table had like Apple logo or I think there was like a Sony table. Like there was like, it was all named after tech companies. So clearly he's like passionate about this stuff. Do your friends think you're weird? Like or do they even know what you're doing? I mean, they know about the website. They just know what it exists. Right.

They're not buying. Yeah. Yeah. So do you? And who do you look up to? Who, who, like, if you're a teenager like yourself, you're trying to be a great entrepreneur or you're building cool things. Who do you look up to? Who do you think is doing awesome stuff in the world?

I mean, I really got, like, my inspiration for doing, like, trying to build some stuff from my dad. Like, that's really where it came. And what did he, what does he teach her? What does he tell you? Like, what kind of guidance does he give you? Well, he basically just encourages for me to, like, not think about what I want to do now, but think about, like, the future. And I have a photo of Isaac when, man, you must have been four years old in this picture. I'll ask your father and you if we could put this in the video.

But it looks like you're four years old and you are putting together a PC. Like you literally have a screwdriver and you're assembling a PC. Do you know what photo I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah. I was around, that was for my eighth birthday because my dad wouldn't let me just buy a computer. He wanted me like actually build my own computer. So I was watching like YouTube tutorials Before I asked him if I could build my computer

I was watching YouTube tutorials on how to build a computer Like what parts to pick out And for my birthday he let me do it This is amazing isn't it Sean Like it's fun to hear him talk about this stuff Isaac you've inspired me today Man you're doing very cool stuff And you are so far ahead of the game

You know I was still picking boogers when I was 14 years old So I can't believe the type of stuff that you're doing and I hope that there's people out there who are listening either their kids or maybe some young people that are listening to this that will kind of use this as a bit of a green light to build more stuff. We should make like a group. You know, Isaac, the only thing I would recommend for you is you said you don't really have like kind of a friend's group or peer group of other people

who are doing this. I think you should do that, man. I think you should find the other kind of 14 to 17 year olds that are doing really interesting stuff on the internet and just be in a discord and a group chat together because you will all get smarter faster and you'll all kind of learn from each other's projects versus just being in your own silo on your own.

That's my only advice for you. Not that you ask, but I think that that would be good for you. Maybe we can make it the MFFM Jr. Discord. And anybody who listens to this can go join it. Isaac, do you have a goal? Is there like, are you just having fun now? Or is it like, by the time I'm 18, I want to be doing this?

By the time I'm 40, I want to be doing this. Do you think of it that way? Or is it just I want to learn it to code and this is a cool way to learn? My goal right now is just to like progress my way. on my price satellite to like get at least a million views a month. Like that's really my goal. And I'm going to progress from there.

By the way, Sam, you know that meme that's going viral right now with the Olympics with the shooter, the Turkish shooter? That's that's Isaac right now. My goal is to do the thing I'm doing better. That's my goal. That's how far I'm going to take this. I'll take this as far as I can. What do you mean?

If Price Satellite gets a million views a month, will that be making money? What's the plan? Not only ads, but you have affiliates for places that sell these bags, like secondhand, or they sell like the Real Real, which sells like the new bags. It's just like a reseller platform. And I can be an affiliate to those companies along with that. Isn't there a thing where people pay other people to buy it in that country and then travel or ship it to them? Yeah.

A company called like Mule or Donkey or something like that. That was basically like, oh, it's cheaper in Denmark. So then they find somebody who's already in Denmark to buy it on your behalf. And then they're either traveling to the United States where they ship it to you. And then you get the discount without having to go there. Yeah, I've seen one of those websites, but I don't really know too much about them. I'll have to look into it. By the way, why aren't you playing with like AI and crypto and stuff that's like kind of the cutting edge?

I am definitely with AI. So what are you doing with AI? A lot of price satellite is built on AI. So first of all, like a lot of the code base, like the web scraper, the back end, the front and the styles, a lot of that was built off AI. The categorization of products done with AI and the product descriptions, I can't do 10,000 product descriptions by myself. So I really used AI for almost all of those.

You know, I wanted you to come on, Isaac, because you're impressive, but mostly because because you make me feel good. I like talking to you because you make me realize that life's a lot simpler than it needs, than we often when we grow up kind of make it out to be. We make it more complicated. And you make me happy just hearing like, well, I'm just going to get a little bit better. And it's a very wonderful, fresh mindset. I appreciate you.

Isaac, one more thing before you go. We are the ideas podcast. We're the podcast where people brainstorm business ideas or ideas for products that don't exist. that they think should. I am curious, do you have any other ideas, maybe that you don't have time to build right now or you think would be cool,

anything, it doesn't have to be even fully baked out in your head. It could be kind of a half of an idea. Is there anything that you've seen that comes to mind? So along with AI, I feel like AI right now, everyone's trying to build like their own different app. But I think that building like AI into what we already have,

like the messaging app, the phone app, that's really what's going to make AI a lot more convenient for people. So instead of searching for like people, places or things through like a search bar, basically we just text like an AI. Like can you find me this? Can you find me someone who does this like a job for me? And then it will like basically call a bunch of places like maybe reservations. It'll find you like places in the area.

You text an AI and it'll book for you. It'll find new times. and that's what's going to make AI a lot of convenient for people. I love it. So like a What's at bot or an I message bot that you could just text. Yeah, you're your AI on demand.

Yeah, just text to AI. You're the man. You're the man. Just don't change. Keep going. All right. He's like, these guys are weird. No.

I kept saying I make him happy. We appreciate. you, man. Thanks for doing this. And keep going. You're the band. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back.