A British schoolboy has rejected a £5 million offer by American investors to buy the money-saving website he created in his bedroom at his parents’ house, the Mail Online reports.
Mohammed Ali, 16, who launched his first company aged 12, has earned more than £40,000 after creating his own video game and a financial app for the stock market.
The teenager, from Dewsbury, Yorkshire, is now set to launch a price comparison site with 60-year-old business partner Chris Thorpe and claims it is unrivalled by competitors.
Mr Ali said that when the pair met a group of Americans in London to discuss an investment, they instead offered to buy the company for a sum of ‘more than £5 million.’
The sixth-form student would not disclose the exact figure but said: ‘We met the investors in London, they were a global data driven company, and they didn’t realise I created all the technology involved.
‘The offer was rejected in December, just before Christmas.
‘The main reason we rejected the offer was because, if the technology and concept is worth millions already, just think how much it will be worth once people use it.
‘I understand this is a big risk for me but I want to create this as a household name, and at the same time make something for myself.
‘The big thing about what we’re doing is that there are no competitors – this is a real time money saving expert – it’s like a Bloomberg for the general public.’
For his latest venture, weneed1.com, Mr Ali said he has ‘developed an algorithm which provides real time quotes instead of the normal pre-fixed quotes you find on insurance sites.’
The idea for the money-saving website came from Mr Thorpe, an entrepreneur who lives in Scarborough with his family.
He founded WeNeed1 in 2009 as a reverse marketing platform designed to introduce buyers to sellers of goods and services in the UK, but it wasn’t until he arranged a meeting with Mr Ali that the idea really took off. (MailOnline, NAN)