Ben Pasternack may only be in his early twenties, but he has already taken on his fair share of multimillion, and even a few multibillion dollar companies. He is also one of the most experienced entrepreneurs of his age!
Recently, we have covered a series of young entrepreneurs, otherwise known as kidpreneurs, including Rachel Zietz and Mikaila Ulmer among others.
Early Life
Ben Pasternak was born in eastern Sydney to Mark and Anna Pasternak on September 6 1999. He is the eldest of three children, having two young siblings, a brother, Jake, and a sister, Maya.
For much of his life, Ben has lived in the upper-middle class neighborhood of Vaucluse. His parents sent him to the very well respected Reddam House school, which would soon turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him…
In 2015, at the age of only 16, Ben was sat in one of his Year Nine science lessons. As with many kids his age, he was extremely bored, with his science teacher rambling about something he couldn’t care less about.
Instead of staring into space, or dreamily at a crush, Ben was on his phone. Instead of playing a game or checking his Facebook profile, he accidentally dreamed up a highly addictive, yet fun to play app.
Ben Pasternak subsequently used his Facebook to connect with a likeminded American teenager, Austin Valleskey. Using Facebook and text messaging, the two coded and perfected their app, which they named Impossible Rush.
Within only a few hours, the app was finished, with Ben and Austin launching it later that week. The pair paid a marketer to spread the word although didn’t expect much from it.
That very same day, Ben and Austin’s app overtook Tinder and Vine (among others) and topped the US app store. The app peaked at seventh in Sweden, sixteenth in the US and eighteenth in Australia.
Entrepreneurship
According to both Ben Pasternak and Austin Valleskey, neither had expected the app to do anywhere near as well. Instead, they launched the app more out of boredom than for a sense of making large amounts of money from it.
However, the success of Impossible Rush led the boys to launch a follow-up game, Impossible Dial later that year. This inadvertently launched both boys’ business careers.
Later that same year, Impossible Dial was acquired for $85,000. Due to the app’s success, both Google and Facebook were keen to get both boys on their teams, offering both of them internships.
However, Ben declined both offers, instead deciding to drop out of school and move to New York. Here, he would establish a new business, financed through American venture capital money.
Flogg
In 2015, selling Impossible Dial, Ben had the idea of an eBay/Amazon type app that was tailor-made for teenagers. He noticed that many of his friends had eBay and/or Amazon accounts, but couldn’t have them legally.
Upon moving to the US, Ben began to take this idea more seriously after several venture capital firms agreed to back him. In April 2015, he began work on a social networking marketplace.
By late 2015, thanks to the venture capital money, Ben launched his new app which he called Flogg. This was in reference to the Australian term “flogging” which can mean to sell something.
Within a year of founding the company, Flogg had briefly reached No. 1 in the trending section of the App Store. Following this, the app remaining in the trending section.
In 2017, Ben placed the app on hold in order to focus on a new company, which he called Monkey, intending to return to it at a later date. As of the time of writing, this has not happened and the site remains inactive.
Monkey
This is likely because Monkey was launched, taking up more time than he’d initially planned. As such, seeing him unwillingly abandon his first “independent” company.
In 2017, Ben launched Monkey, modelled somewhat off Apple’s FaceTime. However, Ben had the idea of allowing you to call a random person anywhere in the world, as well as your friends.
Whilst this concept may seem rather… odd, it was well received. People loved the ability to simply ring a random person and have a conversation with them, with many forming long lasting friendships.
The app has peaked at No.1 on the App Store several times, resulting in Ben being able to meet people like Tim Cook (Apple’s CEO). To date, the app has had 20 billion hours of calls and 20 million calls.
Due to this, Chinese technology company Holla announced that they’d be acquiring Monkey from Ben in December 2017. By January 2018, the deal was completed, with Ben walking away with an undisclosed sum.
NUGGS
Shortly after selling out to Holla, Ben Pasternak decided to start yet another company. This time, it was called NUGGS, a company that wanted to make chicken nuggets without having to use actual chickens for it.
This was in the hopes of reducing animal cruelty suffered by chickens in poultry farms.
To do this, Ben partnered with a group of scientists. With them, he discovered that using pea protein can simulate not only the taste and appearance of chicken, but also the texture too!
In July 2019, NUGGS announced that Canadian conglomerate McCain Foods had partnered with them. This was done in the hopes of creating a chicken nugget that was pre-cooked that could be reheated at home and sold in supermarkets.
To do this, Forbes reported that McCain had given the start up a grand total of $7 million to adapt and reinvent their chicken nuggets for this purpose. As of the time of writing, there is no new news about the company.
Today
Today, Wealthy Persons estimates his net worth at about $5 million. This includes the stock for NUGGS and the financial assets he has acquired to diversify his portfolio since selling Impossible Rush.
Ben Pasternak still lives in New York, living in an apartment with his business partner Isaiah Turner. He is still backed by a series of American venture capital firms for NUGGS.
Ben is still a vegan, drawing on it in order to continue to improve NUGGS, very recently rebranded as Simulate (although the NUGGS name is still the more well known one, at the minute anyway).
Reviews for NUGGS in particular are very mixed. Many reviews hail it as the end of an era for meat-based chicken nuggets, and the beginning of an era for vegan-based “chicken” nuggets.
However, many others hail it as overhyped, mostly down to the founder only being a teenager and the media playing to that. Another review just stated that it tasted synthetic and not very palatable.
Personally, I am not a vegan (or a vegetarian) and I quite liked NUGGS. I wouldn’t be surprised if NUGGS soon became more common at supermarkets and even fast food restaurants, or at least their own version of it.
How Can I Replicate What Ben Pasternak Did?
Short answer: You can’t. At least not 100%. Ben has used his age, and the knowledge of people his own age to make several multimillion dollar businesses, making what he and his friends want.
And in all honesty, why would you? You could in theory make a series of companies that do exactly the same thing that Ben’s do. But there probably wouldn’t be too much of a market for you.
Long answer: You can. Although, you can’t replicate it 100%. Instead, it’s more about what Ben Pasternak and other technology entrepreneurs can teach you.
If you want to become the next Mark Zuckerberg, or even the next Ben Pasternak, you are going to need to know things about them. Luckily, you can read their biographies online for free.
For something in a bit more detail, you can read many early technology entrepreneurs’ biographies, and occasionally even their autobiographies! If you just want to conquer the business industry as a whole, why not read biograhpies of other famous businessmen too!
By reading their biographies, you find what makes them tick. And more importantly, what sets them apart from other people. By doing this, you can then apply it to your future or current business(es).
What Can we Learn From Ben Pasternak?
Despite only being in his early twenties, Ben Pasternak is more successful than most adults will be in their entire lives. As such, his life can teach you a lot about life, not just personal finance and entrepreneurship.
Don’t be Afraid to Start Something New
Ben’s first company was the teenager’s equivalent of eBay and/or Amazon. When he old that, he realized that there wasn’t enough space in the market for him to do it again, or at least something similar.
As such, he launched a teenager-oriented version of FaceTime. Upon selling that, he again realized that there wasn’t enough space in the market for him to do it again. And he probably had legal restrictions on it too.
So he has now launched NUGGS in the hopes of combining the deliciousness of chicken nuggets, and the healthy living so many teenagers seem to strive for. Maybe if he sells NUGGS he’ll try something new once again.
Essentially, Ben hasn’t been afraid to take the money he’s earned and do something new with it. And this can be the same for you, if you’ve been working a corporate job for 10 years, why not try something new?
Know Your Audience
All three of Ben’s businesses to date have been aimed at teenagers and young people in general. At the same time, Ben is/was also quite young, aiming his companies at people his own age.
For Ben, he saw the rise in apps like eBay and Amazon and realized that they catered mainly to adults. In particular, he noticed that his friends couldn’t (legally) have Amazon or eBay accounts. So he launched Flogg.
After selling Flogg, he noticed that his friends were using things like FaceTime in order to communicate. He believed he could make something that gave users a better user experience. As such, he launched Monkey.
Following the sale of Monkey, Ben has noticed the trend in healthy living among young people. He noticed that people loved items like McDonald’s chicken nuggets, however, worried about their health. As such, he launched NUGGS.
Side Hustle
Personally, I believe that Ben shows this extremely well. For the vast majority of his career, Ben has been a schoolchild first, and a businessman second (although, if he’s anything like me, he probably saw it as the other way around!)
Despite this, Ben still legally had to go to school in the day, with him running his business in the evenings. Even though he is worth millions of dollars, he still couldn’t escape the 9-3 of school.
On top of this, Ben also had homework, essays and test revision to do, which his teachers would’ve said was more important. Ben has probably been in trouble for not doing his homework in favor of his business at least once…
By starting a side hustle, especially as an adult, you get the best of both worlds. Not only do you get a steady income from your day job, but you also get a secondary income from your evening one, which can eventually become your primary!
Be Consistent
Consistency isn’t just something you should apply to your business and/or personal finances. In reality, consistency is more of a life skill than anything else, with pretty much everything needing some level of consistency!
Ben shows this particularly well in my opinion. As a kidpreneur, Ben doesn’t have the luxury that many of his competitors have. He simply can’t spend all day on one task, he has to complete several each day.
As such, it’s highly likely that when Ben was in school, he was coming home and spending maybe six hours focused solely on his business. When all of his friends were going out at the weekends, he was at home, making the app they used to communicate.
Perhaps Ben has even worked on public holidays. Yes, that may even include Christmas! This isn’t because he particularly wants to (although he probably does) but it is because he has to in order to be successful.
He can’t have three weeks off or his business will go under.
Age Doesn’t Matter
At the age of only 15, Ben established his first business in the form of the Impossible Rush app. By the time he was sixteen, he was a high school drop out and was running his business full time in New York City.
Whilst running his business, Ben has had his fair share of competitors, sometimes being companies as large as Apple and Facebook! When he has met with venture capital firms, his age has likely worked against him.
Nevertheless, Ben persisted. Ben hasn’t allowed his age to stop him, if anything, he has seemingly embraced it, using it to make himself a lot of money, whilst using it to convince other VC firms to partner with him.
Regardless of your age, you can do it too. Ben isn’t alone, there are several teenage entrepreneurs (otherwise known as kidpreneurs) such as Mo Bridges or Mikaila Ulmer.
And if you believe that you’re too old to start your own business, think again. The man who made McDonalds the juggernaut it is today was 52 when he started!
Has the story of Ben Pasternak inspired you? Tell me in the comments!
