This 15-year-old CEO is banned from LinkedIn because…

Eric Zhu, 15, is the founder and CEO of Aviato

At the age of 15, Eric Zhu is attending high school, running a startup and even serving as an investor with Bachmanity Capital, but there is one thing he still cannot do – make a LinkedIn account.

Zhu, 15, is still too young to meet LinkedIn’s minimum age requirement – the business networking platform requires that its users be at least 16 years old. This has put the high schooler in an awkward position with his employees – many of them older than he is – as he has had to explain why they can’t find him on LinkedIn.

“I had to tell my new employee that I got banned from Linkedin for being 15 years old today…” Eric Zhu, founder and CEO of Aviato, shared on Twitter this week. He posted a screenshot of a message he received from an employee which read: “Hey Eric, I was excited about my new role with your company and I couldn’t tag you in my LinkedIn post for some reason, I think you may have me blocked.”

Alongside this screenshot, Zhu shared another picture which shows his exchange with a LinkedIn representative. The representative informs him that LinkedIn users need to be at least 16 years old.

I had to tell my new employee that I got banned from linkedin for being 15 years old today… pic.twitter.com/fskiVDnpWw

— Eric Zhu (@ericzhu105) June 15, 2023

According to the Asian Founder website, Zhu is a high school student in Indianan, US. He describes his company Aviato as the “ultimate startup search engine for venture funds.” Aviato has raised $1M in pre-seed funding from investors including Tom Preston-Werner (founder of GitHub) and the owners of Sacramento Kings.