Christian Owens

Christian Owens launched his first internet company aged 14 and hasn’t looked back since.

After leaving school at 16, the young tech entrepreneur has been involved with a number of start-ups including Branchr Advertising; which secured big name clients such as William Hill and Myspace, and Mac Bundle Box. Now, aged just 20, Owens’ latest venture Paddle looks set to be his most successful business yet.

Offering developers “everything they need” to sell digital products from apps to content to payments products, digital start-up Paddle has grown rapidly since its launch in December 2012 with turnover of £600,000 for 2014 and million-pound revenues projected for 2015.

Backed with over $1m seed funding from angel investors, Owens is focused on product development and the recent launch of Paddle’s new in-app analytics tool for desktop and mobile demonstrates the company’s potential for growth. Growth prospects are also reflected by Owens’ rising staff numbers with 12 employees to-date and plans to recruit an extra eight staff members by the end of the year.

While Owens admits that success at such a young age has “had its challenges”, particularly when “walking into meetings and handling first impressions like ‘he’s young!’”, he acknowledges that his age has often worked to his advantage by giving him the opportunity to “take risks and go for it without reservations”.

With a portfolio of happy customers who have praised Paddle for “helping them streamline their business”, Owens is confident that the business will continue to go from strength to strength.

Over the next five to 10 years, he predicts that Paddle will change the way people build digital businesses.