How This Stanford Student Built a 300K+ TikTok Following Teaching Financial Literacy

Adam Kogen’s first business wasn’t glamorous. In third grade, he started a homemade baking company—with exactly one customer: his mom. But it wasn’t about profit. It was about the process: building a website, designing business cards, and creating something that felt completely his.

That love for building things only grew stronger. In middle school, Adam launched Pi Decks, a custom fingerboard company he ran out of his bedroom—complete with 3D printers, a hydraulic press, and even part-time employees. By high school, he had sold the business and was ready for his next venture.

That’s when Teen Executive was born—a TikTok account aimed at demystifying personal finance for teens. It started with 300-view videos and eventually ballooned into a platform with over 300,000 followers, teaching everything from compound interest to investing in index funds.

Here’s how he did it—and what he learned along the way.

#1: What were your first real entrepreneurial projects?

Adam: My favourite story is starting my homemade baking business in third grade. Even though my only customer was my mom, going through the process made me obsessed with the idea of starting a business.

So in middle school, I made this company called PI Decks. If you’ve heard of tech decks, they’re basically miniature fingerboards. You can usually buy them at a Target or some store for $5 and they’re made out of plastic. But there’s actually this whole community around fingerboards which are much higher quality and use real materials from big skateboards.

Honestly, it was so fun - middle school me would be running to the post office with these huge bags just filled with my tech decks.

PI Decks lasted right up until high school. I ended up selling the business because I wanted to free up more time to prepare for academics, colleges, etc.

#2: What made you begin Teen Executive?

Adam: I had always loved finance. Even while running Pi Decks, I was investing whatever money I had—tracking the market, comparing ETFs to bonds, learning how it all worked.

And people around me started to notice. Friends at school would come up to me and ask, “How do I start investing?” or “How do I open a brokerage account?”

So I made a TikTok account.

At first, every video got 300 views. That’s just how TikTok worked—it would test your video with a small group. But I kept refining. I’d notice what people liked, what they didn’t, and slowly started to figure out what made a video resonate.

“Okay, people like this, and they didn’t like this.”

And eventually, I made my first video that went viral. It was called “How I Made $5000 Instead of Buying a Gucci Wallet.”

It was about investing business profits into Tesla stock instead of buying something flashy. That got 450,000 views—and everything took off from there.

#3: As a teenager, how did you feel confident enough to teach personal finance?

Adam: Honestly, I’ve always been a talker. My parents are huge extroverts—my dad will talk to anyone on the street and learn their whole life story—so I grew up around that energy. Sharing ideas out loud has always felt normal for me.

That honesty actually helped me build trust with the audience. I really took it as an educational experience more than anything else.

#4: What made you realize, “Wow - I made something big?”

Adam: A lot of people would start recognizing me in real life. They’d come up to me in different cities, on the plane, and in the grocery store. Almost every single one of those interactions was overwhelmingly positive.

They’d say things like, “Hey Adam, I’ve been watching your videos. I was actually able to convince my parents to help me start a brokerage account from your video.”

Another one was “I made my Etsy startup and got my first sale!”

Or “I’ve just started investing, learning about compound interest and other healthy investing practices.”

That always made my day. It hits completely differently when you see your impact in person.

Another big turning point was when I was able to consistently hit videos in the 100,000+ view range. When I hit my first viral video I thought, “Okay, I’m never going to get one again.”

But as I kept on posting, each video would teach me something new. I’d tailor each video to the audience which was evolving based off the demographics TikTok was showing me on my page.

#5: What’s your creative process for making videos?

Adam: Ideas never come when I sit down and try to brainstorm. I’ll get nothing.

I do some research, then just sit down and try to naturally yap about that topic. I’ll type out a loose script, put the camera in front of me, turn on the light, and just talk away.

It’s a really fun process. There really is nothing else like TikTok. There’s just different tests of viewer engagement at each level. It was great figuring out what each of those levels were.

#6: What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned from building this platform?

Adam: The world is both way bigger and way smaller than we think.

At the same time, the internet makes it easy to form real connections. I met someone through TikTok who I used to work with. We fell out of contact, but just reconnected because we realized we’re both going to Stanford in the fall. That made me realize the world is small in the best ways.

On a bigger level, running Teen Executive has taught me not to care as much about the superficial criticisms of the masses. People would write all these terrible things to me. But it helped to realized that these comments were coming from a couple random people in a huge world.

#7: What’s your advice to a student interested in building their own start-up?

Adam: When you’re making a start-up, the idea is not the hardest part. Sometimes the best ideas aren’t the prettiest. Even something like making a little wooden toy skateboard could be wildly successful.

If you have an idea and you think it’ll work, but other people are looking down on it or think it doesn’t fit within the bounds of normalcy of a good start-up - don’t let that deter you. Determination is the most important factor.

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