We all have our own unique story. Dan Reeves is no exception; the 20-year-old serial entrepreneur and founder of an award-winning Southampton based digital marketing agency, dropped out of college at 17 to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams full time.
It was a rollercoaster journey from boom to bust and back again. Here is Dan’s story and how he became a successful teen entrepreneur…
An aspiring YouTuber from the tender age of 9, Dan’s entrepreneurial journey started at age 13 when he joined a Multi-Channel Network (MCN) to run ads on the gaming videos he was producing. After discovering they would take a huge cut of the revenue and lock him into an exclusive 5-year contract, Dan (by his own admission quite naively) decided he should create his own network.
In the two years that followed, Dan spent a lot of time dodging phone calls and in-person meetings due to his high-pitched voice, but his hard work and determination paid off. He managed to successfully scale his new business to be the fastest-growing YouTube Network in the UK, partnering hundreds of YouTubers with a collective tens of millions of subscribers.
The result? At just 15 years old, he sold the business to an American company.
With his sudden fortune burning a hole in his teenage pocket, Dan spent 100% of the money pretty quickly on everything that might appear on any typical 15-year-old’s wish list; new gaming PC, new gadgets, new in-game purchases. “Any purchase that would be considered ‘stupid’, I probably did it,” he says. “This was a huge learning curve and I’m so happy I learnt that lesson so early in life“.
Sadly, due to personal circumstances, Dan and his mum were registered homeless shortly afterwards and were forced to live in various temporary council accommodations and B&B’s during his GCSE exams.
Knowing he needed to start another business in an effort to turn things around, Dan couldn’t decide what business to pursue so instead, he applied for a job with an Influencer Agency in Birmingham. Dan recalls “They thought I was 3-4 years older than I actually was and offered me an interview. It was the first time I took a train on my own, and it was 2.5hrs to Birmingham”.
Unsurprisingly, Dan got the job and gained 6 months of experience in influencer marketing. His mind was now made up; with that valuable experience under his belt, he would leave and start his own influencer agency.
Aged just 16, he was now doing brand deals for YouTubers and his success just a few short months later understandably filled him with pride in his achievements; “I remember being sat by a pool at 17 years old in Ayia Napa and receiving payment for an £8,000 brand deal thinking I was on top of the world” Dan says laughing as he continued to recall the joy of his first major purchase: “At 16 I couldn’t even drive but ordered a brand new Mercedes for my first car. Turning up to college in that was pretty cool.”
As his studies continued, Dan knew that university wasn’t a plan that would align with the development of his already growing business and didn’t want to be squeezed into that mould. “College became far less exciting when I was ‘forced to apply to university’ whether I wanted to or not,” says Dan.
Still in his first year at college, his studies seemed to be becoming less and less important to his future entrepreneurial success. “I remember the distinct realisation when I was in a business class, being taught things I had already known for years, then sneakily going on my phone to reply to some emails with a client, and closing a £2000 deal before the lesson had ended. That prompted me to think how far I could scale the business if I wasn’t putting so much time every day into college lessons that didn’t really mean anything to me.”
In addition to realising that college was severely restricting the time he could commit to growing his business, Dan was being taught the fundamentals in class, of subjects he had already mastered in the real world; “One of my media lessons in college was on Influencer Marketing and various YouTubers and how they monetise their content. But I’d already built and scaled an influencer marketing agency to over £100k/year by this point, managing YouTubers and their monetisation for them”.
After weighing up all the facts, he made the decision to drop out of college just before the end of his first year to focus full time on his business and continue scaling the agency. “I dropped out as soon as I was told I needed to do AS Exams at the end of the first year. I simply didn’t have the time to revise” says Dan.
It was a decision that he didn’t regret, especially when he was able to order his first performance car (a Mercedes AMG) aged just 18.
Fast forward to now; at 20 years old, having turned his love of influencer marketing into a highly successful agency, Dan has become a highly sought after influencer marketer and has been a talent agent for some of the UK’s most influential people.
But it doesn’t stop there! Building on the success of his agency, Dan wanted to inject his capital and shift his focus into something he was really passionate about. As you may have guessed, he loves cars! So, in May 2021 he launched his brand new business venture ‘Hydroshine’; a car care product that he spent over half a year developing, and, although it’s currently his full-time focus, it seems like there’s certainly a lot more to come for this go-getting youngster.
“Growing up without money has without a doubt given me that drive to be successful. I’m still very much at the start of my journey, but I have big ambitions” Dan says.