Christopher Logan Jackson
Most teenagers would do anything to not sweat during their summer holidays. When he was 12, he used his summer to build a Ravencoin mining rig by saving up the money he had, 3D printing brackets from a first generation printer, and heaving love with the feeling of making something work. This wasn't just a one time thing, the young boy kept that early spark alive. As the son of a family of entrepreneurs, the kind that are doers rather than talkers, he was the first one to graduate high school in that family, a milestone, which had more impact on his relationship with education than any other classroom.
At present he refers to himself as a "wunderkind" seriously, but not because of pride, rather because of correctness. In the same time, he is creating software, doing scientific experiments in the field of aerospace and managing EconTeen, a financial literacy platform that is now supported by two large universities in Georgia. The idea of this platform is not from the stars: he wrote a rough, imperfect book at his 16 for the employees he directed in the painting business. "It was terrible," he says with a smile, "but at the age of 16 I wrote a book. No matter how bad it was, it was done." This considered shipping first, perfect later is present in every one of his works.
It was only after EconTeen reached thousands of users that he felt it was real. "I had created something that was scalable," he remarks.
The speed of the change hadn't been slowed down by anything. His goal is very much Southern and he is not apologetic about it: "We take over the South." The idea is don't beat around the bush. Colleges desperately need students who truly understand budgeting, and EconTeen is willing to be the silent force behind that change a platform that helps students, makes local credit unions stronger, and grows through referral driven community loops. "People overcomplicate finance," is his opinion. "It's really not that hard."
Even the education system has not always been on his side. An email was sent to him after he had spoken to 90 students who were highly engaged and enthusiastic about his session, saying that he was not an expert and did not know what he was talking about. At present, he lets it go. This is one of many examples that contributed to his big lesson he learned from his experience of being a leader in a team as a teenager: people are inconsistent, unpredictable, and always in the "grey area." Life to him is not really black or white not behavior, leadership, or technology. "Everything that has ever happened is in the middle of the probability curve," he states. "No technology has ever achieved the highest peaks of possibility. It's all grey area."
Although EconTeen may be the project that takes up most of his time, he has lots of other ambitions as well. The fact is that he is still a builder at heart the one who was once a rocket project ("going well," until EconTeen took over his time) and is now drafting long term plans that extend way beyond Earth. His idea of desalinating the sea by condensation is only one of the many steps on the mental roadmap that also comprises space habitats and, as he puts it, "terraforming Venus."
He doesn't idealize the hard work. His leading rule is very much pragmatic: "Do something. Anything."
Burnout? "Don't burnout just get the hell up."
Failure? He is comfortable with it. "Most of the things I have done are failures, but not wastes. They are lessons. They have propelled me to become better."
His mentor he doesn't see but it is Elon Musk; the thing he is pursuing in life is just "satisfaction."
If you put the question to him where he would put $5 million tomorrow, he would by no means hesitate: EconTeen is the place.
Approximately $50,000 would be spent for the completion of the new app, and the rest would be put to a full force marketing and lobbying effort to get the platform integrated and mandated all over Georgia universities. He is all in the daily challenge raises the bar every day and he raises it with him.
When people most often mistake him, what that people most often mistake about him, he answers in four words: "I'm more than a guy."
What if the people were to talk about his work 20 years from now and he were to answer their question?
"That it got better."