“If you don’t believe in your own idea, then you won’t get anyone else to believe in it – no matter how hard you try”
Hillary Yip
Most children of her age play around, discuss their favorite TV shows or are too stressed with their teenage problems. But this girl began a startup at a mere age of 10. Hillary Yip, the youngest CEO in the world, is today a proud founder and owner of MinorMynas, a language learning app.
“People treat me as a kid sometimes I get that. I’m 15, but I prefer being treated as an adult because I’ve had some experiences. I’m still learning, but that doesn’t mean you should count me out as immature.” says Hillary.
MinorMynas is an online educational platform where children across the borders can learn different languages, chat and make friends across countries. The use of live video calls allows children to engage in conversations to learn different languages from each other.
“I wanted to let kids from all over the world learn and exchange their languages — and make it fun, too.”
Hillary Yip
Hillary Yip was born and brought up in Hongkong. She is a student of Kellett School. When her mother sent her and her brother to summer camp in Taiwan for Chinese improvement after struggling with it for years, she knew she had to create MinorMynas. Her experience in the summer camp was a life changing one. Her idea of creating an online version of the experience led her to participate and win several entrepreneurship awards, including “AIA’s Emerging Entrepreneur Challenge 2016 1st place and Best Business”.
“My vision with MinorMynas is to connect the world through kids, letting us learn together as a community, making the world a better place.” says Yip.
Children in over 60 countries will be able to connect through her educational app so they can expand their knowledge on topics they are passionate about and gain more understanding of other cultures. Hillary believes her product can solve the screen time problem by allowing them to simultaneously learn as well as teach. Additionally, she pointed out that many children were using the app as a way to study things that were beyond study plans and to delve deeper into topics that they were personally passionate about.
Hillary attributes her success to her mentors and her parents who have always been her constant support.
Her success is evident from the fact that she has featured in a number of places like BBC, CCTV, Yitiao, Yeti and the South China Morning Post. She is an extremely popular keynote speaker and has appeared at TEDx stages, as well as events hosted by HSBC and Microsoft. She was also a keynote speaker at the Global Women Forum 2020 in Dubai.
With an eye towards fostering a greater awareness of in-app learning, Hillary Yip plans to work with other providers.
“In our second version, which is in its final stages, we plan to launch parent communities since the exchange between an international group of parents does not exist today,” Hillary says.
International Journal of Research (IJR) 