Teenager makes $100k on Bitcoins and launches his own company

Less than two years ago, Erik Finman took $1,000 he received from his grandmother, and invested it into a little-known commodity called Bitcoin.

When the digital currency became one of the most-hyped topics of the past year, Finman sold - for a tidy $100,000, using the money to start a company that employs 20 people.

Oh - and he's 15 years old.

Finman hails from rural Idaho, and is not the greatest fan of school - so his company is designed to connect anyone to a tutor in different subjects, and cut formal education out entirely.

"[In rural Idaho] you don't get the best teachers in the world and it's very hard to motivate myself to academic work so homeschooling wasn't an option," he said in a Reddit Q&A session.

"One of my teachers said I was a loser and I should just drop out."

When that $1000 cheque arrived from his grandmother (and Finman knows that sounds excessive - "I called her up to ask if she was dying"), he invested in Bitcoin because his older brother had been interested in it, and he wanted to join in.

"I honestly didn't think it was going to be an investment at the time," he said.

But his luck held out as Bitcoin started to grow in value – and peaked when Finman sold his Bitcoins for $1200 apiece to hire his first staff - at exactly the right time.

"I honestly thought I made a big mistake when the next day it went to $1300. But two days after that, Bitcoins crashed."

Botangle is still in its early stages with a tiny userbase, but the teenage entrepreneur is attracting interest after a profile on social media and tech analysis site Mashable.

Finman told Mashable that, despite being aware of the risk involved in Bitcoin, he's still a big believer.

"I'm sharing the wealth of bitcoin because I have no doubt it will be huger [sic] than anyone can imagine right now," he said.

"Bitcoin is like the Internet in the '90s."

And he's still no fan of school - if he makes $1million before he's 18, his parents have agreed they won't insist on him attending college.

But maybe he'll have built his own by then.

Erik Finman's startup is Botangle, and he blogs at erikfinman.com.