Did anyone have their own business while still in highschool?

Won't lie - I was a scumbag. If there was an opportunity, I took it.

  • Sold drugs. Weed, oxys, coke, molly, etc. Grew up in an affluent town, had connections in the bad towns. Not the answer people want to hear, but, nothing in life has taught me more about how to run an actual business.
  • Sold booze. Collected empty bottles from bars claiming to be recycling them. Took high-end ones (grey goose, patron, etc.) and filled them with plastic bottle shit. Shrink wrap seal over the cap, sold for 2x orig. msrp.
  • Brokered homework/essays/projects services. Again, affluent town - lots of kids with $40k/yr allowances. They would rather hire someone to do all their schoolwork, and I obliged. I was in all AP classes, so it was easy enough to tap other students in them to make some $$$ on the side.
  • For a little while, I had access to the grading system. Put a physical keylogger on the IT admin's machine, got his network admin password. Used that to run a batch install of a software keylogger on every machine in the school network. Had that for about 3 months.
  • Street racing. My cars could never keep up with the rich kid's cars, but I was more than willing to organize meets and act as an escrow for bets.
  • Working on the aforementioned cars. Sound systems, performance upgrades, etc. Ended up getting some serious certifications for that stuff, and launching a proper custom car business after college.
  • When someone upgraded their stuff, I would buy the old stuff for cheap & flip it on eBay.
  • Marketing / fundraising for parties. No one wants to throw a house party that is 99% dudes. $20 cover charge for guys - I take half. Schedule "clients" for non-competing nights. Essentially work as doorman / security, with a police scanner to know when to calm things down.
  • Sometimes took hush money. I didn't talk much, but still, my discretion wasn't free.
/r/startups Thread