8. The Master of Domains

Matt Wegrzyn, 19

You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to get the better of Matt Wegrzyn, of Bodis.com. In fact, you might not want to go to bed at all. The creator of Bodis.com says that "a typical day probably starts at 10am for me and lasts until 5am. There's just too much to do in order to sleep. I feel like I need to work every hour possible on the weekdays in order for this company to be successful."

Bodis is a domain-name parking service. If you invest in a domain name but don't want to create a site for it, you can park it with Bodis. It will place click-through ads on a page bearing your domain name, then split the revenues with you. In 2007, Bodis split enough ad revenues to pull in US$1 million.

It was a natural venture for Matt, who bought his first domain name at 17 for US$120 and sold it a few weeks later for US$500. Eventually he became a premier "domainer," selling some plum names for as much as six figures. But he considers himself a developer first and an entrepreneur second.

"In my opinion, developers have the biggest advantage," says Wegrzyn, who mastered the ColdFusion programming language by age 15 and has done all of the development work on Bodis. "They can easily start their own company, sell their own software, develop their own code. And there's always something that you can develop that is not out there. There's nothing better than knowing your own service/product inside-out--literally."

It also helps if you keep a schedule that would turn most people into zombies. But Matt has vowed to start taking it easier very soon. "By 2009 I [will] work normal hours, no more all-nighters," he says. "And by 2010 I plan on showing up only a few hours per week. It's not because I will lose dedication. I believe with all the hard work I am putting in right now, there won't even be a need for me to show up two years from now."

9. The iPhone Hacker

George Hotz, 18

Most hacking exploits earn their creator at best notoriety, and at worst, a prison sentence. But when George Francis Hotz became the first person to unlock Apple's iPhone last August, enabling it to work with any GSM wireless carrier, he got a US$50,000 Nissan 350Z and three more iPhones. The car was courtesy of Certicell, a firm that resells used handsets; Certicell also took the opportunity to hire the then-17-year-old as a consultant.

But Hotz is no one-trick wonder. Before he ever touched the innards of an iPhone, he had won a US$20,000 prize in a national science competition sponsored by Intel. The title of his project--"I Want a Holodeck"--proves he's nothing if not ambitious.

These days, the teen is studying biotechnology at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the US. For fun, he hacked the magnetic stripe on his student ID card, enabling him to unlock any door on the RIT campus. But he still finds time to play with iPhones. In February, Hotz published another exploit that permits a full software unlock of the latest iPhone software, earning him an additional US$1182 from a Web-sponsored unlocking contest.

Memo to Steve Jobs: Hire this kid now, before he puts you out of business.