12-year-old Ryan Croft was a lawn-mowing tycoon

Every entrepreneur has to start somewhere. In Lemonade Stand, we’ll profile a local entrepreneur’s first venture or first job. Tell us about yours.

Today, Ryan Croft is the cofounder and COO of TransitScreen, the 1776-based mobility startup that just landed a big partnership with real estate developer JLL.

But this is far from Croft’s first successful venture.

“The hustle started early on,” Croft told Technical.ly in an email. “When I was 12 years old I started my own lawn mowing service in my neighborhood. Through middle school and high school, I had as many as 30 weekly customers.” The business was called Ryan Services.

“The enterprise generated so much cash that I hired a few workers, paid for advertising and invested my profits in the stock market.”

Croft added that he mostly traded stocks like Oracle, Motorola and Sirius Radio. “Early lessons in finance, I guess.”

When seasons threatened to cut into the young entrepreneur’s business, Croft found a workaround. “Given that lawn mowing was so seasonal, I went door to door to shovel snow or rake leaves in colder months.”

“The experience taught me the value of hard work, customer service and how to stay organized.”