The Unicorn Company
$6 billion dollar valuation with a 6 year old Founder
My daughter, Era Moon Hernandez, is a super creative little 6 year old. She loves to draw, and is always coming up with amazing ideas. The thing is…and yes…I know it’s super weird to be thinking about this already…BUT…I don’t really want my daughter to go to college (unless she really wants to). I’ve always wanted her to already have a profitable company before she graduates high school, so she would be faced with the dilemma of — “Do I go to college or do I grow this company?”
This has been on my mind a lot lately, so this week I asked her…
“Era, if you were going to start your own business what would it be?”
She didn’t even take 2 seconds to think about it before she just blurted out “UNICORNS!!!” I asked her what she wanted to do with Unicorns, and she told me that she “really really really loves drawing unicorns.” I then asked her…
“Do you know you could start a unicorn company right now?”
She looked at me with that super cute puzzled look, and said
“Daddy, I’m not a grown up, I can’t have a company”.
She said it so cute, but it actually made me sad. I knew I had to resolve this…so I told her we can start her own company right now. All we need is a product, and since you love drawing unicorns lets turn those drawings into a product. She asked me to help her, and that’s when The Unicorn Company was born.
We got to work. She started drawing unicorns, and I started working on her website. I used squarespace to get something up quick, and after she was done with a few drawings we would take product photos together. Then after we uploaded it to the site I would ask her to describe her drawing for me so I could use her own words as the product description. When you go to her site and read the product descriptions you’ll see what I mean. I kept in all her…umms…and mmmms…and ohs…in there so you can really hear it from her mouth.
If you can’t wait here’s my favorite example for this product called — Unicorn Human
Ummm…it has 3 horns. Because I think it’ll look cool like that. Umm…her dress is purple…i think it looks pretty…like that. Umm…she has 3 legs…because things can be like different…like she has 3 horns…she has 3 legs. THINGS CAN BE DIFFERENT.
So tonight I got her site finished, and am about ready to launch it, but I started thinking about all the things I want her to learn about this process. Here’s a quick rundown of what I hope she takes away from this project:
- Things she creates have real value
- There is a process — create the art, sell the art, ship the art (and I will have her do all of these steps herself, down to licking the stamp)
- There is a big world out there. My hope is that I can get someone to buy one of her drawings from somewhere else in the world, so she can see how the internet connects people globally
- Selfishly, I want her to know what her daddy does (design, build products, etc)
- I want her to also understand how hard having your own business is. It’s not always fun, but if you love what you do it’s worth it
- I want her to understand how hard her mama worked to build her own spa
- Most importantly I want her to have fun, be creative, and see how fun being an entrepreneur is
I’ll end with a quick message to my daughter, that hopefully she can fully read all by yourself here in a few months. (she can read a lil bit right now, but she’s still learning)
Era,
Daddy loves you so much, and even if you don’t sell a single unicorn drawing, I seriously loved working on this project with you. It makes me so happy to watch you draw, watch you be creative, and to be super excited to build your company. I’m super proud, and excited for what you’re building & whatever you’re gonna build in the future.
Check Out — The Unicorn Company
Update: She’s on Product Hunt Today — https://medium.com/@raydawg88/the-unicorn-company-d620d56c075c
