Ben Pasternak has lived in a $5,000 a month apartment in Hell's Kitchen, New York, for two years. He gets $160 hair cuts. He's mates with Drake. He's a veteran app maker and has been for years.
He's 18 years old.
Credit: Facebook
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When I was 18, I was doing exams and living off pizza. All that's changed now is that I don't have any more exams, to be honest.
But Pasternak dropped out of high school when he was 15 - because the iPhone game he made when he was bored in a science class suddenly caught a lot of financial investors interest. So much interest, that he was able to relocate from his native Australia to New York by himself.
Wow his parents are trusting.
Since then, he's made an app called Flogg which was a marriage between Instagram and Ebay where users swapped their unwanted belongings for cold, hard cash.
Started from the bottom, now we're here (Credit: Facebook)
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But even though he's a whiz kid, and a tech genius a la Mark Zuckerberg, he's still only a teenager. He regularly loses his credit cards and forgets to pay his bills. I mean, ok I didn't have any credit cards at 18 and ditto with bills but it's nice to know there are still some struggles Pasternak has yet to master.
His latest venture was launched at the beginning of the year. Monkey is a video chat app used for teenagers to meet new people on the internet, in a safe way. So far it's been used to make 5 million calls and has over 2 million users.
"One of the big problems is that all the apps out right now are built by a bunch of adults. We are both the creators of the project and the end user, which isn't really the case with things like Snapchat," Pasternak told Mashable.
He made the app with 18-year-old Isaiah Turner, a friend he met on the internet who is now sleeping on Pasternak's couch.
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Pasternak says that his app a bit like Chatroulette but without any perverts. Cool.
It's clear that Pasternak is one to keep an eye on. And to be fair, it's probably in his blood, his grandfather is a property magnate worth $300 million and his Ukrainian immigrant great-grandfather invented popular Aussie snack Twisties.
I mean, who knows what he'll achieve by the age of 19.
Featured Image Credit: Facebook/Ben PasternakTopics: Facebook