| I'm 18 and have learned a lot in the last year or so. I've spoken at length to investors and founders to get advice so understand your situation. I've been able to build a profitable startup with 100k+ users and am now working on my next thing. Firstly, your age won't stop you raising money. Believe me, it's a huge bonus IF you're ready and serious. But if you want to start a company it has to be something you dedicate all your time to and spend years building. VC's invest because they expect you to build a company and then IPO or exit one day. I don't think you can live up to building a company if it's a summer or part-time gig. Secondly I'll email you so you can tell me your idea as I assure you very few things are unique. In social networking almost nothing as there are hundreds of thousands of competitors. You won't get investment by emailing investors sadly, you have to build relationships. This is the perfect time to do it. Here's my advice. If you are interested in building a company (while doing college), raise some seed funding under 10k from an angel you build a relationship with or one of the many LA incubators and then build it through college with a co-founder. You'll be able to take your time, gain traction and if it does do well then you can take it further but will probably have to drop-out. You don't have to have a co-founder but it makes sense for product decisions and actually building a great product. Freelancers are a waste of money and require a lot of work, if you want to build something real you'll eventually hire and having a co-founder makes sense for most. You can use what you already have towards it as it'll help to get a co-founder if you have something tangible. By the way I'm not advocating college as the sole option, I'm not going at all but it really depends on what you're looking for any where you are on your journey. By the way, you're in LA. A pretty huge tech scene, you should be making the most of it by going to lots of meetups and meeting founders and potential investors and partners! You have no excuse. |