Crimson co-founder Jamie Beaton, centre front, with New Zealand delegates to Harvard and Yale model United Nations for 2016.
Crimson co-founder Jamie Beaton, centre front, with New Zealand delegates to Harvard and Yale model United Nations for 2016.
Jamie Beaton is the 20-year-old CEO of Crimson Consulting, which he co-founded in his teens. He is also studying for bachelor and master maths degrees at Harvard.
Tell me about Crimson Consulting.
We put support people around learners to help them succeed in future careers as wellas in university and school. There are a lot of biases related to where you're from - sometimes in good ways, sometimes bad. We want students to be directed, supported and mentored regardless of where in the world they are born.
Did you always know you were going to go do this?
When I was a student at King's College people wanted to push me into medicine, engineering or law. It was just luck I realised I could apply to overseas schools. One reason I'm so passionate about this business is if I had listened to everyone around me I probably wouldn't have got into the US and UK universities I applied to. Now I've seen the wild world of technology, entrepreneurship and finance and have been around a lot of people on very different career trajectories than you might think of coming from New Zealand. There's such a big focus on entrepreneurship here - Mark Zuckerberg was in the house next to mine - and Harvard seemed a natural fit. I've had this amazing ecosystem here to mentor and support me. I probably wouldn't have started the business if I hadn't been exposed to that.
I was around 18 and trying to convince big education establishments, parents, lawyers, journalists and other highly informed professionals my team was in a unique position to add value to students. Once our first round of students went through, people saw what we were doing.
Entrepreneurship is the mechanism to deliver ideas and values on a very large scale and have a big impact. If I was one guy in a march down Queen St and calling for education development, probably no one would listen. I have students developing and performing at the highest levels and it sets me up to have a larger impact. I want to build a business that across the world helps students be the best they can be, and have results that are uncorrelated to where they are born. I want to keep scaling this business to be as large as it can be and have the most impact.
