About Us
As a precocious eight year-old in early-eighties Miami, I came up with an idea to earn enough money to buy Space Invaders for the Atari 2600. I would start a business taking neighborhood dogs out for twice daily walks WITH a 100% poop guarantee. Probably because I was so darn cute and not because I had a solid service market fit (or poop guarantee), my business thrived and I was able to buy Space Invaders AND Missile Command.
That experience gave me my first taste of industry, autonomy, and confidence that would ultimately lead me to build a software company that would employ hundreds of people and be acquired by a publicly traded company. Then, 44 years after I was a canine defecation kingpin, my eight year-old son asked me for money to give to charity like his idol, Mr. Beast. While I admired his altruistic intentions, I told him that, in order to give, he had to earn. Then, together, we proceeded to build a Shopify store.
Thirty minutes later, both of us were fed up and frustrated. Shopify was too confusing for a middle-aged technology industry veteran, not to mention digital native pre-tween. We didn’t even have a store and I was already enrolled in at least five automatically renewing subscription services that each cost more than a Nintendo Switch per month. I just wanted to give my boy the gift of earning money on his own. And that’s when KidCorp was born.
The idea was simple: make Shopify simple enough for young kids and the grown-ups that love them. It had to be free, fun, and easy enough to build and operate for someone who’s only recently learned to read and do math. And it had to provide children with the oh so valuable experience of owning a business that’s much more relevant today than a lemonade stand. I hope we’ve succeeded. This is a work in progress and we’re focused on constant improvement, so please feel free to reach out with any ideas, suggestions, or questions.
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