Jonathan Manzi Net Worth: Details About Beyond Protocol CEO
Jonathan Manzi’s net worth at age 16 made him the youngest industry-made millionaire. Now he’s making an “internet of devices” with Beyond Protocol.
Jul. 6 2021, Published 1:51 p.m. ET
Tech entrepreneur Jonathan Manzi accrued a net worth of more than $1 million at age 16, which made him the youngest person in history to cross that threshold through industry, according to Crunchbase.
At the time, Manzi was the young businessman behind Vintage Network, an internet advertising company he started in Massachusetts as a 15-year-old, according to his 2010 profile in Stanford Magazine.
Now he’s in Silicon Valley, working on a distributed ledger technology project that’s operating in “stealth mode.”
Read on for more about Manzi’s career so far.
Manzi thrived on chaos while running Vintage Network and attending Stanford.
When Stanford Magazine profiled Manzi, he was still a Stanford University freshman who was trying to juggle his studies (under the guidance of his adviser, August Capital general partner David Hornik) with his Vintage Network entrepreneurship. That work involved overseeing seven full-time employees, 11 part-timers, and two offices near Boston.
The workload took a toll on the then-19-year-old. “I don’t sleep,” Manzi told the magazine. “Chaos has become normalized for me. When I’m actually not in a chaotic situation, it feels abnormal. But I love the chaos. That’s what makes it exciting.”
Manzi decided to take a quarter of his freshman year off, but his LinkedIn profile shows that he returned to the school, studied management science and engineering, and served as the student government’s entrepreneurship chair.
Jonathan Manzi formed Ink Labs while he was still in school.
During his Stanford years, Manzi founded Ink Labs, the maker of Ink Smart Station, a digital kiosk for printing, copying, and scanning documents. In 2017, the 25-employee company announced a move from California to Nebraska.
At the time, Ink Labs conducted a pilot test on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus and partnered with another dozen universities.
“Lincoln, Neb., affords Ink with the ability to attract smart, young, loyal talent at scale and offer them a superlative proposition for quality of life,” Manzi said in a news release about the move, according to the Lincoln Journal Star.
Now Manzi is creating a “new internet for devices” with Beyond Protocol.
These days, Manzi is the co-founder and CEO of Beyond Protocol, which is a distributed ledger technology project based in Silicon Valley.
“The project was started in 2018 by Stanford engineers and technology executives to provide a platform for device security, coordination, and communication — a new internet for devices,” Manzi explained to BTS Labs in June.
He said, “Beyond seeks to build real, practical solutions for device security and payments from consumers to devices, and soon, within an economy of devices. We envision a future where good triumphs over evil, and technology can work for us to create an exponentially safer and more beautiful world.”
Manzi said that Beyond Protocol is “mostly in ‘stealth-mode’ for the time being” but plans to unveil key partnerships in the third quarter of 2021. He also revealed that Beyond Protocol had a market capitalization of $100 million and that the project would sell its native token “from time to time” ahead of a public listing.
