The youngest CEO at 17.

Here's a rags to riches story where the American 17-year-old girl Ashley Quall is featured in a Fastcompany article. It is an interesting article of how a minor (legally) has really become big in business.

The power of Quall's website whateverlife.com hit home last year when Quall posted a music video of an unknown boy band on her website. This was at the behest of the creator of online video widget, similar to YouTube, who had been hired by Columbia Records to see what kind of buzz he could create with an inexpensive marketing campaign conducted purely on the web.

This is evidence of the meritocracy on the Internet that allows even companies run by neophyte entrepreneurs to compete, regardless of funding, location, size, or experience--and she's a reminder that ingenuity is ageless. She has taken in more than $1 million, thanks to a now-familiar Web-friendly business model. Her MySpace page layouts are available for the bargain price of...nothing. They're free for the taking. Her only significant source of revenue so far is advertising.

According to Google Analytics, Whateverlife attracts more than 7 million individuals and 60 million page views a month. That's a larger audience than the circulations of Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and CosmoGirl! magazines combined. Although Web-site rankings vary with the methodology, Quantcast, a popular source among advertisers, ranked Whateverlife.com a staggering No. 349 in mid-July out of more than 20 million sites. Among the sites in its rearview mirror: Britannica.com, AmericanIdol.com, FDA .gov, and CBS.com, even ahead of Oprah.com.

Now her life is centered around working in the basement of the two-story, four-bedroom house that she bought last September for $250,000.