Massachusetts

The Next Zuckerberg? San Francisco Entrepreneur, 11, Crowdfunds to Get to Summer Camp

Eleven-year-old San Franciscan Cash Ashkinos can't afford the tuition for an entrepreneurial summer camp, so he's turned to crowdfunding to raise money.

His IndieGoGo campaign was closing in on $2,000 in donations at the time of this writing, which is just shy of a $2,500 goal that he has set in order to attend Camp Inc., a Jewish entrepreneurial camp in Colorado.

The initiative caught the eye of a writer at Time.com, who wondered whether Cash may be "The Next Mark Zuckerberg?"

"I think that people see on the video how earnest and excited he is about the camp and want to help him," his mother Tanya Schevitz told NBC Bay Area. "You can see in the video that he's both nervous and excited. He's an 11-year-old, and he comes off that way, and I think people can see how real the campaign is."

Schevitz noticed that many people have donated money in increments of 18, an important number in Judaism that represents good luck.

"That makes me feel good and shows Cash that his Jewish community cares," she said. "I didn't grow up with a Jewish community around me, and I love that he has that."

Cash said in his video that if he exceeds his $2,500 goal, he'll donate the rest to the Camp Inc. scholarship fund for other children to use.

Cash once created a lemonade stand to raise enough to go to a summer camp that he was interested in; his mother said that this campaign is a natural extension of his entrepreneurial spirit and his aptitude with computers.

"I'm pretty sure that his future is in the world of Silicon Valley," she predicted, noting that he currently dreams of designing video games.

Cash is part of a growing wave of children across the country leveraging sites like IndieGoGo for their educational pursuits.

A 9-year-old in Massachusetts raised over $20,000 on Kickstarter to develop an original role playing game for RPG Camp. Her goal was just $829.

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