The cool thing about app stores is that you don’t need to be a big name hotshot brand in order to make a splash. Take for instance, 14-year-old Robert Nay of Spanish Fork, Utah. He created Bubble Ball, a simple game where you use physics to guide a ball to its destination. Ain’t flashy by any means but it’s now the #1 most downloaded free app on the Apple app store. There’s a version for Android too. He enjoyed gaming on his iPod Touch and a friend suggested he make a game himself. Nay tried out some programs for game developing, found one he liked, and boom. On one recent day, Bubble Ball got 400,000 downloads. Slap an ad on there and college is paid for.

Here’s what I was doing when I was 14, essentially: