At just 20, Aucklander Jamie Beaton has already made a fortune and will soon graduate with a master's from Harvard. Jeremy Olds reports on the rapid rise of a fast-talking business prodigy.



At a stretch, you could have called them Facebook friends, and their friendship was as shallow as that sounds. They'd never had a proper conversation, and had met only once, at a mutual friend's birthday party during high school. "He was full-on. A little bit socially awkward," recalls Asher Meltzer. "I think we added each other on Facebook after. You know how our generation adds each other on Facebook – just because you meet them, not because you're friends."



Yet on the day Meltzer launched his business last March, the 20-year-old received a surprisingly thoughtful and sincere message from that random Facebook friend, Jamie Beaton.



It was welcome encouragement. Meltzer's business was a website called The Motivational Corner, featuring videos of successful people talking about their career paths. Beaton liked the idea and the website's design. The two began talking more often, first through messages and then by Skype.

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Peter Meecham Crimson Consulting co-founders Jamie Beaton and Sharndre Kushor met in year 10 at a model UN conference.

By mid-August, Beaton had purchased the little not-for-profit. "It was settled in maybe a week and a half or two weeks. It moved fast," says Meltzer. He's coy on the selling price, as he signed a non-disclosure agreement. Asked if it was around $10,000, he says: "Probably higher, but I wouldn't say."

The purchase was an employment acquisition; it was Meltzer that Beaton wanted. As part of the deal, Meltzer now works for him.

The Motivational Corner was one of four businesses Beaton bought last year. There was also UniTutor, a university tutoring service; MedView, a company that prepares students wanting admission to New Zealand's medical schools; and Play Atlantic, which helps student athletes win scholarships to overseas universities (Max Key, the prime minister's son, is a Play Atlantic consultant).



All four now operate in partnership with Crimson Consulting, a company Beaton co-founded in 2013. Broadly speaking, Crimson mentors students who aspire to study overseas, and helps them get into their university of choice. The company contracts around 500 mentors; about 7000 students, mainly in New Zealand and Australia, have used its services.



Last August, Crimson announced it had raised $7.5 million in investment, and that the company had been valued at $75 million. That figure has since grown to $85 million.



Beaton owns just under half the company's shares, which puts his stock's value at roughly $37.5 million.



This June, Beaton will hand in a 35,000-word thesis, and thereafter graduate with a master's degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University. The degree usually takes five years; Beaton will complete it in three.



This month, he turns 21.



GROWING HIS KNOWLEDGE BANK

reuters Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The poster boy for precocious young-gun tech entrepreneur millionaires is Mark Zuckerberg, who was 19 when he started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room.

Zuckerberg lived at Harvard's Kirkland House. Beaton is at Cabot House, a six-minute drive away, but he feels the shadow of the Facebook founder. "Seeing a guy who was my age at Harvard when he dropped out do that, it's kind of ridiculous," says Beaton. "It feels very close. He's very inspirational to me."

His other heroes include the billionaire hedge fund manager Chase Coleman; the billionaire business magnate Elon Musk; and John Key. "It's not his views; more the fact he left New Zealand with his skills, succeeded abroad, showed that Kiwis can reach high and achieve abroad, and then came home and made an impact."



The 'impact' part is important to him. "Success is having the biggest impact on the most people," he says, adding that it also requires constant learning. "I want to be in an environment where I'm continually picking up new knowledge. I want every experience to be incrementally additive to my knowledge bank."



Beaton has a direct manner and speaks very, very fast. He's a gesticulator. The longer he talks, the more excited he gets, and as the momentum builds his conversation becomes jargony, as if he's reading from a marketing textbook. Meltzer says: "Everyone who speaks with him or gets involved with him just hops on to a very fast-moving freight train." I would suggest it feels more like you're running alongside one, slowly falling behind, until you're left watching it zoom away.



Beaton was 17 when he set up Crimson with Sharndre Kushor at the start of 2013. He worked from a laptop in his Harvard dorm room; Kushor from a computer in her family's Albany home. Now Crimson has offices in Auckland and Sydney, with more in Australia, the UK and China due to open this year.



"I actually met him at a model UN conference when I was in year 10," says Kushor, now 21. "When you meet him for the first time he is very, very, like, personable, but at the same time he has a very intense, like, academic side to him. I remember having that distinct impression the first time I met him." She pauses. "That's something that I think has continued."



In their final year of high school, both were selected for New Zealand's model UN youth delegation in The Hague. They represented the Food and Agriculture Organisation. "It's meant to give you a more worldly perspective on international issues and stuff," says Kushor. Somewhere among the international issues and stuff, romance flourished.



"We got to know each other very, very well," she says.



"We came to a point where we realised we were very similar in what we wanted to achieve long-term." They've been together for three years now. Is he romantic? "Umm…" she thinks. "Yeah? I guess so."



The idea for Crimson Consulting came out of conversations that followed their Hague trip. Beaton had applied to study at 25 universities abroad and was accepted to all of them, but found the application process intense and overwhelming. Kushor, meanwhile, hadn't even considered studying overseas – she was enrolled in a Bachelor of Health Sciences at the University of Auckland. Both thought that if information about overseas universities was readily available, and if students had some help applying, more people would consider studying abroad.

BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS In December 2015, Jamie Beaton returned to New Zealand for a month, his longest stretch at home since leaving for Harvard in 2013.

The idea developed: take a student with some potential or ambition. Analyse their strengths and weaknesses, and assign a team of mentors to tutor and guide them. By the time they finish school, that student is a prime candidate for the university they want to go to, whether it's in New Zealand or otherwise.

It's a business that appeals to ambitious kids, but maybe more so to parents who fear that missing out on this extra opportunity might result in an average life for their child. The opportunity to earn a degree from a prestigious university is like a boat that needs to be caught – and parents are prepared to fork out for the ticket. "For students who adopt a very intensive package, it would be in the tens of thousands of dollars," says Kushor.

Crimson immediately found a market: Beaton's old high school, King's College. "We had a very quick client base from people who knew of my experience going through. Parents talk, and they all want the best for their kids." He adds: "We've been cash-flow positive since day one."



Investors took note. In October 2014, Beaton and Kushor took part in an entrepreneur showcase event in Auckland and walked away with $1.4 million. Then, in a second capital-raising round last August in the US, they raised $7.5 million, attracting investments from some New York hedge fund managers. Just how did two New Zealanders, barely out of their teens, convince those loaded investors to back them?



"People believed in our model," says Beaton. "Based on very fast revenue growth, and a very strong team, I think that got them excited. I'm very young and passionate about this. I don't care if I don't sleep for a day or two. I don't mind putting in long hours. They believed in that."



He continues, swept up in himself: "I think my passion can unify people and bring people together. It transcends age and cultural background. When I have a vision, people can believe in me and join that movement."



The Crimson movement surges forward. Beaton and Kushor have big plans "The impact that education has on peoples' lives is hugely important, but if you look at the world's large companies, there are very few education companies. There should be a multi-billion dollar company in scale sitting there," says Beaton, making it clear he wants Crimson to be that company.



COMPETITIVE STREAK



By age six, Beaton knew he was competitive. "I was in year two at St Kent's prep. I won a written language prize, but someone else won the excellence-overall prize. I thought, this is not okay." He thinks his competitiveness can alienate people. "It is a trait that's a powerful weapon when channelled correctly but it can manifest itself badly."



His mother Paula recalls a child who developed intense fixations. "You just had to suggest something, or he'd come up with a suggestion, and he'd became immediately very competitive. Even though he was never really skilled at tennis, he was very competitive. The same with hockey. Being good at sports isn't in our genes, but he was always really competitive."

Peter Meecham Beaton: "I'm very young and passionate about this. I don't care if I don't sleep for a day or two."

The general manager of a property administration company, with degrees in law and commerce, Paula raised Jamie with the help of her parents. "Because I've always been a working mum and been busy, he'd come along to my client meetings. He would always have something to do – Lego, a puzzle, books," she says. Whatever his interest was – Lego, Yu-Gi-Oh cards – she pushed him to go further with it. Beaton says: "Fundamentally, I think I'm very, very much a function – my philosophy and thinking – of my mum."

He attended King's College on an academic scholarship that covered half the expensive fees. He ran the student newspaper (The King's Echo), was captain of the Amnesty International club, set up a model UN, and founded Don't Stand By, Stand Up, an anti drug and alcohol group. "I don't drink or do any drugs and I never have," he says. Outside of school, he was the national co-ordinator for Young Mensa, the global high-IQ society. He worked in the kitchen at Oporto in Mission Bay.

Perhaps the only failure in his short life was not being named head boy. "I really missed the boat there. I really fluffed that. I invested a lot emotionally in that process. It was a little bit painful," he says. "I was probably too pushy with my intention."



But he was dux, received eight A+ grades and two As in his Cambridge exams, and passed nine NCEA scholarship exams, despite not taking any NCEA classes.



So much to say about the young man and his success. But also, so much is unsaid. He shuts down any conversation about money. He won't confirm the percentage of Crimson he owns, which is odd because that's publicly available information (it's 44.16 percent, according to the companies register). He's quiet about Crimson's annual revenue and contractor rates. He won't reveal how much he spent on last year's acquisitions, saying "My lawyers would kick my ass." He does, however, confirm he's a millionaire.



The motormouth also cuts out at the mention of his biological dad. Is he in the picture? "No, no, he's not," Beaton says, and nothing else. His mother is no more forthcoming.



According to Beaton's father, Michael Chapman-Smith, who, like his ex-wife, works in property administration, he and Paula separated when she was pregnant. He says he would have liked to have been involved in his son's upbringing. "Regretfully, that didn't happen." Both parents have since remarried.



Father and son have never spoken directly. Chapman-Smith says he resorted to legal action and the last time he saw his son was in court, when Beaton was still at King's. "Jamie was, at that stage, still a boy, you might say. It was quite an emotional experience for him, I gather. He decided he didn't want contact with me. The counsellors I spoke to all said he was quite emotional about it, but that I should respect his word and wait for him to contact me at some stage in the future."



Through friends, he hears news of Beaton's success. The fact that Beaton still hasn't contacted him suggests he's still not interested in a relationship, but Chapman-Smith hopes that, with time, that will change.



"I've watched Jamie from a distance. He doesn't know it," he says. "I haven't been able to have the contact with Jamie I would like, but there's plenty of time. I think it will be another two or three years at least."

The Motivational Corner, featuring videos of successful people talking about their career paths.

'I HEARD HE WAS ONLY 20'

In December 2015, Beaton returned to New Zealand for a month, his longest stretch at home since leaving for Harvard in 2013. He had just been accepted into the Stanford Business School MBA program's 2018 cohort, and was deciding whether or not to go. On Facebook, Crimson Consulting announced, "He is the youngest ever in Asia-Pacific (and quite possibly the world) to gain admission."

Last month, in the days before he was due to fly back to the US, Beaton spoke at a Crimson event for those thinking about studying for an MBA overseas. As people entered the low-ceilinged hotel conference room, he prepared his slideshow. His swooping fringe of dark hair shone red in the light. He wore a dark suit with a pale pink tie, shiny patent shoes, and an Apple watch on his wrist.

Fifty people had gathered to hear him talk, all university students or recent graduates. There were no parents.

Beaton spoke clearly and confidently, picking up speed as he went. He told his life story, without mention of his father, and described the virtues of an MBA obtained abroad. "On a very basic level, if you're interested in business, one function of your MBA is to be financially well-endowed," he said. "The salaries are very good." He was quick to smile, but there was an uncomfortable air to his presentation. The slick delivery, the mechanical recitation of facts and statistics; he had the onstage charisma of a robot.

Yet, the feeling he inspired among those bright, ambitious young people was something close to awe. Afterwards, people lined down the side of the room to speak with him. He answered their questions and handed out his email address in case they thought of any others.

Lingering behind was Jai Trebucias, a 21-year-old law and arts student, and fifth-year medical student Ben Flynn, 22, both from the University of Auckland. They hadn't heard of Crimson Consulting or Jamie Beaton before today, but saw the event on Facebook and decided to come along.

"It was interesting hearing someone who knows what they're talking about," says Flynn. "He was good, eh? I heard he was only 20."

"He's really smart," says Trebucias. "It's crazy."

Flynn nods. "I mean, what have I been doing with my life?"