Running a record label wasn’t enough for 13-year-olds Finlay Campbell and Thomas Summerfield – so they took it one step further and started a business.
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The year 9 Trinity Anglican College students first started working with computer software at just seven and will now launch a music-sharing website in June.
Thomas said Microsoft representatives had contacted the pair about their website, Defani One, personally inviting them to apply for a start-up business support program, BizSpark.
“It lets you upload your music for free,” he said.
“We’re going to be ad-free and we’re researching about how other free music services make their money, like Spotify and SoundCloud.
“They’ve given us three years of server use to start up our business and we get over $10,000 worth of Microsoft software for the three years.”
Finlay said the name, Defani One, had been inspired by a spelling mistake of the word define in class – but the seeds for the business were planted years ago.
“Basically we’ve taught ourselves through trial and error,” he said.
“I do more the hosting kind of things, making sure people can access it and all the databases.
“We’ve made websites before.”
Thomas said a digital record-label called Defani Recording had come almost two years before the website.
“We still have artists on that, we haven’t fully shut it down but we’re not taking any new ones,” he said.
“Some of them have quit because they found out we were 13-year-olds and they said they didn’t think we could run a business.”
While some have their doubts about the pair’s venture – at times family, concerned with never-ending screen time – the reactions have majorly been positive.
Thomas said the website’s aim was to rival other major music-streaming websites.
“When you refresh that browser page and see it’s come to life, it’s awesome,” he said.
“You can say you made that – wow.”
You can donate towards server-running costs for the website at www.gofundme.com/defanione.