Tomorrow's Tycoons

Casey Reichl, an 18-year-old at Marshall High School in Falls Church, got her start baking people food but is hoping to make her fortune baking for dogs. (Photos By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)

They are so over the corner lemonade stand.

These days, teenage entrepreneurs in the Washington area prefer more sophisticated ventures. And some are running businesses that net thousands of dollars a year.

The Internet has given them the ability to market their products with very little overhead. It has also provided cachet in a business world that doesn't always trust youth.

Their numbers are growing. In the Washington region, enrollment in the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship's programs that help students launch businesses has gone from 200 youths in 1994 to 2,000 today.

"I believe that young people today realize that they will likely not have one career and that they need to build themselves a marketable brand," said Julie Kantor, the foundation's executive director for the Washington region. Here are profiles of three local teenagers who have launched their own businesses.

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Aaron Sacks

Age: 16

Personalized Playing Cards

Sixteen-year-old Aaron Sacks has built a successful business by cutting corners.

Not the kind of cutting that attracts the attention of, say, the feds, but the kind that keeps your customers from getting injured when they handle your product.

This is how it happened: