Ep 13: Hillary Yip - 15-Year-Old Founder of MinorMynas

Hillary Yip is the CEO of MinorMynas, a startup that creates fun, immersive, online products for children worldwide in a safe environment. And as at the time of this interview being recorded, she is a mere 15 years old! She founded MinorMynas at the age of 10 - which makes her one of the youngest CEOs in the World, and has been featured in places such as the BBC, CCTV, Yitiao, Yeti and the South China Morning Post. She is also a popular keynote speaker and has appeared on TEDx stages, events by HSBC and Microsoft and most recently, at the Global Women Forum 2020 in Dubai. Who is Hillary YipHillary was born & raised in Hong Kong and her amazing entrepreneurial journey began with a summer camp for Mandarin in Taiwan. Upon her return, she soon came across the AIA Emerging Entrepreneur Challenge 2016 in Hong Kong and decided to participate. Despite having teammates that dropped out at the last minute, she came up with a proposal within the final 3 hours and went on to win the First Prize and Business Prize! She also met with a number of business leaders who gave her advice and encouragement, and proceeded with the steps needed to bring MinorMynas from being a mere idea to an actual startup!Building MinorMynasIn this STIMY podcast, we discussed:How Hillary found her first customers;Her first MVP & the main findings she obtained;How she scaled from a mere 4 users (2 of them consisted of herself and her brother, Alexis!) to around 4,000 downloads from over 20 countries in the 9th month!MinorMynas’ approach to privacy;How MinorMynas differs from other similar apps; The role of parents on MinorMynas;The behind-the-scenes of launching the 2nd iteration of MinorMynas;Financing & why she chose crowdfunding; andAnd the future of MinorMynas.Apart from MinorMynas…But lest we forget, Hillary is only 15 years old! So we also talk about:Her homeschooling life; Her favourite things to learn about; andWhy Gary Vaynerchuk is her idol.Hillary is a true testament that age is no barrier to the extraordinary things you can already achieve. And I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did!Show notes: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/13