As someone on the founding team of an identical startup a year ago, I can share experience:

- This market is beyond saturated, with countless large companies competing.

- In our experience, small businesses, teachers, etc. will do everything they can to avoid paying for the service, no matter how much value it creates for them. This is why many of the other providers have an 'ad-supported' free plan - freemium is a tough route here (but I'm sure they're just doing that right now as a ploy).

- The general consensus received is 'Oh we have [Facebook|Twitter|Email|...] for that, and they're all free!'

- SMS is more of a private sanctity that people use for family and friends. Facebook, Twitter, Email can be ignored, filtered using labels and lists, and checked when the person has time. People do not want to be SMS spammed with 'We have freshly baked cakes!' 5 times a day.

If I see one more 'teenage startup' post like this on HN (or elsewhere) I think I'll be sick.

It was cute at first, but now I only cringe whenever I see a title like this. Tech blogs do it, news sites do it, and as we can see even the teenagers themselves do it. It's pure link bait.

As said in another comment here, it's irrelevant. Almost every single young entrepreneur's website I see puts their age to the very forefront. "Look at me! I'm only this age! Here's my startup!" (which, a lot of the time, turns out to be nothing but a LaunchRock page).

An associate of mine is the about the same age as these teenagers, but is the complete opposite. He runs numerous 'web startups' and, more importantly, actually generates revenue (high seven figures annually). Investors would fall over themselves to invest. Tech blogs would salivate at his story. But he stays away from that.

The thing is, there are countless young founders like this. Generating huge profits, making big VC deals behind the scenes, working away under the radar. Don't be fooled by the way tech blogs and news outlets try to make it seem so unique.

Disregard your age. Ship a real product. Get users. Generate revenue.

I know many young founders doing all of this and not creating huge hype around themselves. I do agree with your points but you can't put all young founders in the same boat.

Playing devils advocate, if it gets you users, press, etc why not? I'm not using it in this circumstance but if you want to get TechCrunched, have a great product your age will help, why not use it?

The press always needs a story, every blogpost has a story, it may not be age it may be funding or the fact you worked for Google or though of it on a mountain, regardless every tech blogpost has a story not just 'this product has launched'. Blame journalism, not the people conforming to it.

I fully agree with you, do whatever it takes to help your startup. And yes that's just how journalism works.

I'm mostly referring to the young founders' perspectives. Many of them get a false sense of accomplishment and specialness by building a half decent prototype just because of their age, and don't understand how beneficial it is to have killer execution. They often see getting TechCrunched as an end goal, instead of gaining true traction and building a real business.

I see what you mean and agree. Don't let your eye off the prize. Once you get a lot of press you get distracted. If Mark Zuckerberg had a lot of press at 16 would he have got this far?

Then again this is the same for anything. People on reality tv, competitions, etc