Kidpreneur: Where the Word Came From and Why It Stuck

What a kidpreneur is

A kidpreneur is a child who starts and runs a small business of their own. The word is a blend of kid and entrepreneur. It usually describes children roughly between the ages of six and sixteen who make or do something and sell it, rather than children who help with a family business or do paid jobs around the house.

The distinction that matters: a kidpreneur decides what to sell, sets the price and keeps the money. A child mowing a neighbour's lawn for an agreed rate is doing paid work. A child who decided to offer lawn mowing, worked out what to charge and went looking for customers is running a business. Same activity, different thinking.

Where the word came from

It follows a pattern that has been running in English for decades. Entrepreneur entered English from French, and at some point the second half of it broke off and became a productive suffix that could be bolted onto almost anything. Intrapreneur arrived in the late 1970s for people building new ventures inside large companies. Mompreneur was introduced around 1994. Solopreneur followed. Once the suffix existed, kidpreneur was more or less inevitable.

The word's move into common use has a clearer marker. In 2009, brothers Adam and Matthew Toren published a book called Kidpreneurs: Young Entrepreneurs with Big Ideas, which became the anchor for a business teaching children entrepreneurship, later including an online course and an educator programme. Most usage of the word since then traces back to that book and the material built around it.

Which is worth knowing: kidpreneur is partly a brand as well as a description. That does not make it a bad word to use, but it explains why so much of what you will find when you search for it is promotional.

What counts, and what does not

The line is ownership of the decisions, not the size of the venture. A seven-year-old selling six painted plant markers to one neighbour has made every decision in the business. That counts.

Why the word stuck

Mostly because the alternatives are worse. Child entrepreneur is accurate and sounds like a magazine headline. Young entrepreneur usually means someone in their twenties. Junior entrepreneur sounds like a job title at a bank. Kidpreneur is short, obvious the first time you hear it, and children can say it about themselves without cringing, which none of the others manage.

It also does something useful. It tells a child that the thing they are doing has a name, and that other children do it too. For a ten-year-old who has just sold something to a stranger, that matters more than the etymology does.

What the word does not mean in Australia

This is the part worth being precise about.

Kidpreneur is an informal term. It has no legal or regulatory meaning in Australia. It is not a category recognised by the Australian Taxation Office, it is not a business structure, and it does not appear anywhere in the Australian Curriculum, which uses the language of economics and business and introduces those concepts from Year 5.

Practically, that means calling your child a kidpreneur changes nothing about what they need to do. A child's occasional selling is generally treated as a hobby rather than a business in Australia, which usually means no ABN and no tax return. The detail of how that line is drawn is in our guide to starting a business as a kid.

Should you use the word with your child?

Try it and watch their reaction. Some children take to it immediately and start introducing themselves that way. Others find it slightly embarrassing, particularly around age eleven or twelve, when anything that sounds like it was invented by adults for children is suspect.

Neither reaction tells you anything about whether they should be doing it. The word is a label, and the label is optional. What is not optional, if you want them to learn anything from it, is that they make the decisions themselves.

Questions parents ask

Is kidpreneur a real word?
It is a real and widely used informal word, though it is a recent coinage rather than a long-established dictionary entry. It is fine in everyday use and in a school project. It would be out of place in a formal document.

What age is a kidpreneur?
There is no fixed range. In practice the term is used for children from about six to sixteen. Below about six, a child can take part in the activity but is rarely making the decisions, which is the part that defines it.

What is the difference between a kidpreneur and a young entrepreneur?
Mostly age and tone. Young entrepreneur generally refers to adults in their twenties and appears in business and funding contexts. Kidpreneur refers to school-aged children and is informal.

Is kidpreneurship taught in Australian schools?
Not under that name. The Australian Curriculum introduces economics and business concepts from Year 5, covering things like resources, needs and wants, and why businesses exist. Running an actual venture is generally something that happens outside school hours.

The short version

A kidpreneur is a child who decides what to sell, sets the price and keeps the money. The word is kid plus the -preneur suffix that also gave us mompreneur and solopreneur, and it moved into common use after a 2009 book of that name. It carries no legal or curriculum status in Australia. It is a label, and it is optional.

If your child fits the description and wants a structure to work through, the free 7 Day Startup Challenge takes about fifteen minutes a day for a week and ends with them presenting their idea. For capturing ideas before one is chosen, My Ideas Log is a pocket notebook with one idea to a page.

References

• Kidpreneurs, official site, for the 2009 publication of Kidpreneurs: Young Entrepreneurs with Big Ideas by Adam and Matthew Toren and the material built around it

• Wikipedia, Mompreneur, for the term being introduced around 1994. Replace with the primary source cited there before publishing if the editor prefers