If you wait another 3 months I'm sure he'll be running his own hosting business. The majority[1] of Minecraft hosting businesses are ran by teenagers, it's quite interesting how low the barriers to entry are. $50 for 1 month rental on a mediocre dedicated server, $10 for a domain and $20 for a billing system license and then a couple of hours to configure a website template to your liking and you're ready to go! All you need is a few customers and you're already making money. Problem is without volume the business(es) will never make much profit, but for a lot of teenagers $200/m profit and the joy from running a business is worth it. It's the shared hosting of 201x[2]
It can be pretty treacherous for consumers though (part of why Minefold is great, by investing in building a platform they've demonstrated they have commitment to the business) because inevitably most teenagers don't understand the commitment they're making to their customers and things frequently fall apart. I can't count the amount of problems hosts falling apart has caused me, I had to make a concious effort to exclude it from my life about 6 months ago after a kid threatened to drive to my apartment and beat me up.
[1] Most are relatively small but there are quite a few teenage run Minecraft hosts supporting thousands of customers. The biggest Minecraft hosts are "proper businesses" though, with companies like Multiplay hosting ~15k Minecraft servers.
[2] I assume everyone here had their fun times running a web host at some point in their internet career.
This was just the state of the web a little less than ten years ago as well. One of my first businesses as a 12-year-old was running a couple of shared servers and teaching others how to do it as well. The little-big-leagues was actually getting dedicated servers of your own, rented or colo. It taught me a hell of a lot about how to manage a brand at a small scale, as well as how to treat customers (some of whom were clients as well, but with slightly different needs). You're definitely right about some kids not knowing how to deal with the effort and responsibility of running a service business (no matter how small), but there were definitely a few who took it the other way– I would bend over backwards to keep people happy in fear of damaging my credibility.
Anyway, I think it's great that Minecraft can become an outlet for those kids today. Some customers will get a lesson on dealing with people they don't know or trust, and a few young providers will get more than a few valuable lessons on providing a service and keeping people happy.
It can be pretty treacherous for consumers though (part of why Minefold is great, by investing in building a platform they've demonstrated they have commitment to the business) because inevitably most teenagers don't understand the commitment they're making to their customers and things frequently fall apart. I can't count the amount of problems hosts falling apart has caused me, I had to make a concious effort to exclude it from my life about 6 months ago after a kid threatened to drive to my apartment and beat me up.
[1] Most are relatively small but there are quite a few teenage run Minecraft hosts supporting thousands of customers. The biggest Minecraft hosts are "proper businesses" though, with companies like Multiplay hosting ~15k Minecraft servers.
[2] I assume everyone here had their fun times running a web host at some point in their internet career.