Business & Tech
Local Teen Raises $1M for Her Startup—Before Her 18th Birthday
Brienne Ghafourifar earned her undergraduate degree at the age of 17. She's raised a million bucks to fund her startup.
Ambitious is one word that comes to mind when describing 17-year-old Brienne Ghafourifar, who learned Thursday evening that she's succeeded at raising $1 million for her Palo Alto startup Entefy. She is the youngest college graduate to raise $1 million in funding.
Brienne, who graduated from Santa Clara University with a degree in economics last June, co-founded the company with her bother Alston, 20. Brienne will turn 18 on April 29.
Entefy is attempting to integrate communications, search, and cloud storage.
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“Our product is a star,” she said. “It’s extremely beneficial just with the level of convenience, efficiency and centralization.”
Though in stealth mode right now, Entefy aims to be a single application that goes across multiple media platforms, such as e-mail, text, voice, video, social, search and storage into one entity.
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Brienne said her company will also make privacy a priority--Entefy users' information will not be shared with outside parties.
So has her youth made it difficult for her to fundraise?
“I think once in a while there’s been concern over age, but I’ve gotten to work with visionary people,” she said. “There were some ups and downs, but we’ve been lucky we’ve gotten to work with the right people.”
The teen adds that her background has helped her succeed as well. Her parents, who raised Brienne and her brother in the Menlo Park area, own a series of businesses, including a venture architecture firm.
Brienne graduated from high school at the age of 15 through an accelerated high school program.
She looks forward to being able to vote and hopefully start driving once her birthday rolls around.
Where does she see herself in five years?
“Hoping far with Entefy since the opportunities are endless for a solution like this,” she said. “My dream is democratize access to information around the world and to break more barriers.”
Entefy is working out of rented space in the AOL office and hopes to bring on more hires to join their team.
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