UK's youngest entrepreneurs

The UK’s youngest entrepreneurs

We came across three of the UK’s youngest entrepreneurs who have built their businesses from the ground up, contributed to the exciting world of business and inspired others to do the same.

Keep reading to find out about the UK’s youngest entrepreneur!


Nina Devani – Age 16

Nina Devani founded ‘DevaniSoft’ at the age of 14 – a tech start-up with password management software that prompts your passwords and usernames without giving away the password, to ease the struggle of remembering them. This idea stemmed from her personal experience of regularly forgetting her passwords, and when her Father’s Facebook account was hacked.

Nina raised £10,000 from a private investor to fund her business concept and seems to have been profitable from launch. The young entrepreneur has said that she has always had a passion for business from being incredibly young and has been nominated and shortlisted for awards.

Nina now has five employees and an additional 10 consultants working for her and has done so whilst juggling her GCSE’s and A Levels, and we are very interested in seeing where she takes her tech business in the future.

Henry Patterson – Age 14

Henry Patterson, founder of children’s brand ‘Not Before Tea’ was only 14 when he began his business journey. Not Before Tea was the result of a story that Henry wrote at only 10 years old, called ‘The Adventures of Sherb and Pip’. Since building his business, Henry has successfully secured an animation deal to turn his book into a 12-episode cartoon.

After countless interviews at such an early age with some of the retail industry’s heavyweights such as Sir Richard Branson, Henry is already showing others how to run successful start-ups.

With success also comes challenges, to which Henry has said, “The other challenge is school! I can be on The One Show one day and then in a maths lesson the next. I wouldn’t swap it for anything though.”

Harlie Haycox – Age 11

Harlie Haycox, the youngest entrepreneur in the UK, was only 11 when she became the founder of all-American-style restaurant ‘Harlie’s Diner’ based in Leeds. After living in the states for a number of years, Harlie was inspired by the American culture and developed the menu and branding of the diner to showcase this. Harlie’s had said that social media helped her to build a client base, specifically the use of Instagram to help, “bring the diner to life.”

We bet you’re wondering how someone so young could start something like this. Harlie’s father, Matt Haycox’ is the primary investor and co-founder in the business, and with investments made in other likewise companies across the globe, Matt certainly knows a thing or two about food and drink franchising.

Harlie’s father has said, “It seems entrepreneurialism is in the family DNA” as he was just 15 when starting his first business.


All three of the above businesses are successful to this day and thanks to the help of social media advertising, their unique business concepts and solutions are not only here to stay but are also inspiring other young people to have the confidence and drive to start their own businesses too.

Interested in reading more tech start-up news? Check out our latest blog post – ‘UK ranked second best start-up hub in the world’.