Billionaire founder Lucy Guo first made money as a kid on the playground

Serial entrepreneur turned billionaire Lucy Guo shared that increasing up with frugal parents motivated her to commencement hustling from the aboriginal days of her childhood.

The thirty-year-old was precocious named Forbes' youngest self-made billionaire with a nett worthy of $1.3 billion, aft her first business, Scale AI, was acquired by tech elephantine Meta successful a woody that valued the AI information labelling institution astatine $25 billion.

The young entrepreneur is presently the laminitis of contented creator monetization level Passes, launched successful 2022. She besides founded a task superior firm, Backend Ventures, successful 2019, which invests successful early-stage tech startups.

Guo's roots spell backmost to Fremont, California, wherever she grew up with Chinese migrant parents.

"I deliberation my parents ever emphasized the value of acquisition and money, truthful connected the acquisition side, I was decidedly forced to person bully academics. They threw maine into Abacus competitions," Guo told CNBC Make It.

This led to her studying machine subject and human-computer enactment astatine Carnegie Mellon University, but she dropped retired aft 2 years, to the dismay of her education-minded parents. She lone had 1 twelvemonth near to implicit her degree.

"They [parents] sacrificed everything to immigrate from China to America to springiness their kids a amended future, and due to the fact that acquisition gave them everything that they person successful life, for their kids to abruptly fto spell of their acquisition erstwhile they were astir done was similar a slap successful the face," she said.

Guo alternatively decided to prosecute the Thiel Fellowship, a programme launched by the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, which offers young radical $200,000 to physique innovative companies.

"I deliberation they [parents] viewed that arsenic a motion that I didn't emotion them, and they weren't precise blessed with it, erstwhile it was conscionable maine making a stake connected myself and choosing to optimize for what I thought would beryllium a amended aboriginal for myself."

Becoming an entrepreneur was a earthy way for Guo, who was already hustling successful simple schoolhouse and searching for ways to marque money. Her parents led 'a precise frugal life,' she said.

"But they ever emphasized that having wealth is important, truthful I would find ways to marque wealth connected the playground," Guo said. "I would up commercialized Pokémon cards and past merchantability them. I would merchantability colored pencils, thing I could find."

Guo's parents were strict and took her currency distant if she wasn't behaving. So, successful 2nd grade, Guo went to Home Depot and got a debit card, opening a PayPal relationship to store her cash.

Her money-making endeavors progressed arsenic the years went on. A instrumentality of the Neopets game, she took to forums to merchantability virtual Neopet creatures and in-game Neopoints currency.

"I would get uncommon pets, uncommon items, and resell them for existent cash," she said.

When she discovered engineering and coding, she started making bots to cheat successful a crippled and merchantability them.

"I past started uncovering different ways to marque wealth connected the net from making websites utilizing Google AdSense, past creating net selling tools...it conscionable snowballed from there."

Guo said that her occurrence developed from a passionateness for video games, which fostered an involvement successful machine science.

"I deliberation I'm a beauteous societal person, but due to the fact that I wasn't truly chill oregon allowed to beryllium social, I beauteous overmuch spent each my clip connected computers increasing up," Guo said. "The lone amusive I could person was connected a computer."

She said kids who walk clip playing video games mostly effort to fig retired however to beryllium amended astatine the game.

"Video games are wherefore a batch of these students survey machine science...the aforesaid happened for me, wherever I was like, 'How bash I make my ain game? How bash I be[come] amended astatine this game?'"

She added: "I deliberation that if I were much chill successful schoolhouse and I was allowed to person sleepovers and allowed to bent retired with friends and allowed to play sports, things would look different."

Guo's entrepreneurial tone alternatively brought her among Forbes' ranks of billionaires — though immoderate of her ventures person drawn scrutiny.

Recently, a people enactment suit was brought against Guo and her company, Passes, claiming that she allegedly distributed kid intersexual maltreatment worldly connected the level to paying subscribers.

"As explained successful the question to disregard filed connected April 28, Ms. Guo and Passes categorically cull the baseless allegations made against them successful the lawsuit, which was lone filed against them aft they rejected a $15 cardinal outgo demand," a spokesperson for Passes said successful a statement.

Clark Smith Villazor, the New York-based litigation steadfast that filed the suit against Passes, has yet to respond to CNBC's petition for comment.