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A14-year-old becomes a vending machine tycoon

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Riddhi Sharma
New Update

The present day children seem to earn fame at an age the previous generation could rarely dream of. With the exposure to self-learning, the younger ones are achieving success at an incredible pace.

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Taylor Rosenthal is an entrepreneur all at a mere age of 14. The young guy who will be exhibiting his idea -- a vending machine that dispenses first aid products -- at TechCrunch Disrupt this week in Brooklyn has already turned down a $30 million offer for his startup RecMed and has raised $100,000 in angel investments so far.

Rosenthal's startup idea his started off as an eighth-grade project when he was one of 19 students in a Young Entrepreneurs Academy class project. They had to come up with a business idea and Taylor already had one. As the first baseman and pitcher for his high school baseball team, he had observed that there was the lack of first aid kits available for purchase at baseball tournaments.

"Every time I'd travel for a baseball tournament in Alabama, I'd notice that kids would get hurt and parents couldn't find a band-aid," he said. "I wanted to solve that."

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Initially, he thought of a pop-up shop but soon realized that this model would prove expensive as he would be required to pay his staff. The idea of vending machine came on a rebound. Rosenthal designed his machine consulting his parents, both of whom work in the medical industry. By December, he claimed a patent and launched his start-up and had a working prototype and his idea was already patented.

Presently, there are two sets of option for first aid supply in the vending machine: prepackaged first-aid kits for dealing with issues like sunburns, cuts, blisters or individual supplies like band-aids, rubber gloves, and gauze pads.

Rosenthal, who wants to pursue a future in business, already has an order from Six Flags for 100 machines and he plans to start deploying them from this fall. RecMed will make money by selling the machines, which cost $5,500 apiece, and through restocking fees for the supplies.

Here is an interesting interview with him