Young entrepreneurs: Nicholas Shekerdemian, Headstart app

Name: Nicholas Shekerdemian
Company: Headstart App
Age: 22
Website: www.headstartapp.com

Are entrepreneurs born or made? That’s the question we would pitch to 22 year-old Nicholas Shekerdemian whose analytical prowess at the ripe age of 13 saw him receive a scholarship to King’s College School in Wimbledon to study the International Baccalaureate.

Progressing to the prestigious Oxford University to study Chinese, Shekerdemian studied for a year in one of China’s best universities; Peking.

It was during his time at Peking University that he founded his first start-up, Teaching From The Top, an online education company providing English tuition and university application consulting to Chinese students.

Coming to the end of his stint in the Far East, Shekerdemian felt pressured to land an internship with a high-profile business – much like many of his friends had already achieved.

Becoming fed up with repeatedly filling out the same information on various application forms, and believing they didn’t best represent who he was as a person, Shekerdemian began to build out Headstart app.

Using predictive algorithms to assess the suitability of its users towards various internship roles, the app aims to improve the graduate recruitment process by creating a more diverse workforce, “connecting talented students with their dream jobs”.

Launched just last September, Shekerdemian has since brought on a co-founder and now counts the likes of Vodafone and L’Oreal as clients.

So, what’s next for Headstart? In Shekerdemian’s own words, you can expect to hear a lot more noise about Headstart in 2017:

“We see ourselves dominating the UK market within the next 12-24 months, and scaling into other markets before 2018.” Quite a statement, but we certainly wouldn’t put it past him!