A young entrepreneur who skipped university to concentrate on his business is on the way to making his first million pounds – aged just 20.
George Edwards went against the tide by choosing not to go to university during his final year if AS levels, creating his company Gas Sense instead.
Now George’s business which allows people to monitor the levels of gas remaining in a bottle and is set to make its first million as a US retailer just signed up for 450,000 units.
The brainiac from Canterbury, Kent, has made some influential friends and even got the backing of Sir Richard Branson.
Speaking about his success to student newspaper The Tab, he said: “It’s been remarkable, really.
“I’ve always been interesting in engineering and business and knew it’d be something I’d like to end up in.
“So I just followed through with Gas Sense and it’s sort of happened organically. It’s led to me starting a company and doing all sorts of exciting things.
“As a result I’ve not gone to university but it’s taken me all around the world meeting really exciting people, shaping everything that I’ve done since.”
George came up with the idea during his AS Engineering coursework.
He said: “I had to come up with something to design and make.
“My teacher was a very keen caravaner who felt bottled gas running out was a big issue. So I thought I could have a stab at fixing it.”
His project was highly commended at the Young Engineer for Britain competition and has gone from strength to strength.
George said he was perfectly content to skip university and is already doing what he wanted to do in the future anyway.
He said: “I’m perfectly content not to go. It would have been hard to have gone and made both work but it would have been really tough to leave my business.
“This is what I wanted to end up doing anyway, so it would have been the shame to go to uni and end up doing something else.”
While George loves his work at the moment, he said the business has his undivided attention.
He said: “You’ve got to really believe in your product and business, and also love it. I work seven days a week basically all the time and its not because I have to it’s because I really want to.”
