December 1, 2025
This Gen Z entrepreneur is set to generate over $1 million from his tech startup in 2025, all while attending college full-time.
Meet Elijah Khasabo, the 22-year-old college student and founder of the tech startup Vidovo, which is projected to earn over $1 million this year.
While many Gen Z students worry about a challenging job market, Khasabo is balancing running his user-generated content platform with completing his senior year at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
“Nothing hurts more when the momentum is there. People are talking about you. You’re finally getting your respect. It’s like the bootstrap grind is finally starting to pay off—and knowing you have to go back to school in September, nothing hurts more than that,” Khasabo told Fortune.
Khasabo’s entrepreneurial journey began as a teenager, when he created a Discord server to share stock market ideas, which grew to 30,000 members in just two and a half months. Now a college student and tech founder, he finds his studies often get in the way of the career he’s already building. At times, he even considered dropping out, returning to campus only 14 hours before his first class of the semester.
Khasabo launched Vidovo from his bedroom after buying a user-generated video that went viral, racking up 15 million views. Seeing a major untapped market, he created Vidovo as a platform for users to create, share, and monetize short-form content. Since its launch, he has balanced product development, customer outreach, and learning to run a company—all while transferring to a four-year university, keeping up with classes, and navigating campus life.
Despite juggling school and growing a tech startup, Khasabo sees the greatest benefit of continuing his studies as the network he’s building on campus.
“The more I can learn from other people, the more people I can meet, having a healthy social life, and being able to provide value to others—that makes me happy,” Khasabo said. “You never know where a student I met yesterday will be in three years.”
Khasabo now values the timing of Vidovo’s success, noting that if it had taken off before college, he might not have pursued a degree. Instead, he’s appreciative of the balance he’s learning while fulfilling a promise to his mother to earn a degree and growing personally and professionally as an entrepreneur.
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