13-year-old launches his second tech firm at web summit

Teenage entrepreneur Jordan Casey announced the launch of his second technology company, TeachWare, at yesterday's Dublin Web Summit.

Taking to the digital marketing stage, the 13-year-old from Waterford said this TeachWare cloud-based management software will help teachers manage information such as attendance and exam scores about their students.

With TeachWare’s free web-based application teachers will be able to store student information in the cloud, so there is no fear of them losing the information.

He added that the web app, which is aimed at primary schools, will be cross-platform meaning teachers can log on to it using any device.

Huge laughter
He drew huge laughter and applause from the web summit attendees saying: "In 10 years I'll be 23 and will already have 10 years experience as an entrepreneur."

He said one of the disadvantages of being a teenage entrepreneur is that not all investors and venture capitalists take him seriously.

Jordan also has a gaming company called Casey Games. The first game he developed reached the number one spot in the iTunes app store. He has three games in the app store.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Jordan said he came up with the idea for TeachWare at school.

“One of my teachers had a big black book where everything from attendance to exam marks was stored. If she lost that book all the information for the entire year was gone. I thought it would be better to have information like that put into the cloud, so even if something happens to a tablet or laptop it will still be there.”

Jordan spent the last three months testing the software in schools in India, South Africa and Ireland, receiving positive feedback.

“The application is currently free for schools to use. I’m going to ultimately make the site advertising-based and charge a fee for systems which school principals can buy to monitor what’s going on in every classroom.”

Another teenager at yesterday's web summit was Co Laois student Caolan Fleming.

The 12-year-old, who is Europe's youngest games developer, was given €200 by accounting firm KPMG to help get started with iOS.

He already has some experience of developing games on android but wanted to branch out.

The kid coder said he has already developed a minecraft style game in Unity, and said he is currently working on a Windows version.