I'm Mark Bao, 16, owner of Avecora and coder and all that, and my parents are highly against, extremely unsupportive of coding/business/entrepreneurship. I'm guessing that it's a result of my lack of focus towards (high) school.
My reasons for doing this kind of thing early:
1) The people. Like eisokant said, networking is extremely important and I take it seriously.
2) The experience. I'm not getting a huge amount of business experience from this, but it's still valuable to learn about.
3) Make some money to re-invest into future things.
All are hard to do and are important problems. Unfortunately, I've been unable to network around here due to location (Boston = sucky networking compared to the Bay Area) and time. And, of course, my parents are anti-supportive of it, so it's tough to find time to work and code amidst their demands and school.
I think it's an age/cultural thing. Same story here, but with my grandmother. She is a professor at Moscow State U, and is very saddened that I'm not going the respectful and institutionalized route of academia. To her, entrepreneurship is something for selfish people.
My reasons for doing this kind of thing early:
1) The people. Like eisokant said, networking is extremely important and I take it seriously.
2) The experience. I'm not getting a huge amount of business experience from this, but it's still valuable to learn about.
3) Make some money to re-invest into future things.
All are hard to do and are important problems. Unfortunately, I've been unable to network around here due to location (Boston = sucky networking compared to the Bay Area) and time. And, of course, my parents are anti-supportive of it, so it's tough to find time to work and code amidst their demands and school.