CEO at Sixteen

When I think back to sixteen, three things come to mind: video games, anime, jerking off. If someone asked what I wanted to do with my life, I’d say something vague about media and everyone would leave me alone.

Charles Bahr, Dean Körzdörfer, and Urs Meier are fifteen and sixteen. They’ve started an advertising agency called TubeConnect, built around the idea that brands need someone who actually understands how young people use social media and Instagram and why they care about influencers and all that.

We grew up with this stuff, Dean explained. He looks about twelve, which means by thirty he’ll probably be a fitness entrepreneur married to an Instagram girl with millions of followers. For adults, I don’t think they can understand why we spend ten hours a day on our phones. They see the addiction. We see the infrastructure.

It’s funny watching kids this age throw around words like viral and authentic engagement and influencer strategy as if they invented them. And sure, there are probably cringey moments in their pitch decks. But there’s something worth noticing underneath: they identified a real problem—brands don’t know how to talk to young people, and young people do—and they’re solving it. They’re not waiting for permission. They’re not trying to become reality TV stars. They’re just working.

It’s functional ambition, which in itself is already rare.