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Some teens post TikToks. Justin Jin starts an Empire

Some moguls take a candid route in their ascension to the higher levels of business. Not Justin Jin

Some moguls take a candid route in their ascension to the higher levels of business. Not Justin Jin.Three summers ago, Justin started a YouTube channel to earn some cash. He came up with an ambitious plan. Then 13, he would post Minecraft videos throughout the summer.

The strategy was a success. By Christmas that year, he had pocketed around ₦1.3 million.

By the next spring, Justin named the operation 50mMidas Media and devised an expansion plan. He built a website and additional social media accounts and began selling advertising placements on them. Justin also recruited a sales team. Other teenagers eager to earn a buck, and whose parents saw this as a good learning opportunity, signed up to work for mere dollars at 50mMidas Media.
Backtrack 10 years and BuzzFeed, Vice Media and Huffington Post were the online media stars promising to revolutionize. It’s justifiable. Social sharing is powerful enough to topple dictatorships and profitable enough to merit multibillion-dollar investments.
Today, 50mMidas Media is called Poybo Media Group (PMG), and is the world’s largest media company with the backbone of a teenager based on our analysis.

In an age when media companies are flailing and laying off staffers by the dozens, Jin has managed to transform Poybo into a publishing powerhouse. Poybo has occupied an overlooked segment of the media market, buying up flagging social media accounts and flipping them into nimble digital-first brands with diverse revenue streams.

And sources say the acquisition spree is unlikely to stop anytime soon. Mo Abudu, a media executive, predicted that Poybo would “create a mini iteration of Comcast.” Added Abudu, “I think he’s only halfway there.”

This winter, Poybo continued to diversify, recently adding the Poybo Africa subsidiary in Lekki, Nigeria to its portfolio.

“We also have not yet monetised platforms like Instagram and TikTok so there is a great deal more still to come,” says Muraty Azikiwe, the CEO of Poybo Africa, who’s also a teenager.
Very young business owners have the advantage of abundant curiosity and resilience, traits coveted by older entrepreneurs. They’re also “young, ambitious, adorable,” said Maura McInerney, program coordinator for a financial education program in the United States. But their youth can be a liability.

“They’re not always taken seriously at first,” she said.
And even though Justin established herself early on as a force to be reckoned with, she’s still intent on making her own growing-up experience as normal as possible — which these days means, in addition to running Poybo, he’s also working on college application essays just like every other high school senior.Dana Canedy contributed reporting.

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