Meet British teen prodigy Scott Hiett: At 7 he self-taught coding before co-founding a startup at 15 that raised 1.5 million within 2 years

Scott Hiett, a British software developer and a technology entrepreneur, has built his career around software engineering, project ownership, and executive technical leadership. At the age of 15, he created the long-running multiplayer project SimSync, where he has worked as lead developer and project owner, according to his LinkedIn profile.

For Hiett, a self-taught coder, the passion for programming began taking shape at the age of seven when he bought himself a ‘Teach Yourself Visual Basic’ book with a gift voucher he received on his birthday, according to Forbes.

He “read it backwards, forwards, upside down, and left to right and spent a lot of time making cool little projects.” Next he moved on to another book, ‘How to build an Android app.' Scott never looked back and continued to read books, watch videos on YouTube, and make small projects for many years until he was fluent in many programming languages

Victory in Finastra’s FusionONE Hackathon

In May 2019, at the age of 15, while attending Marling School, Hiett gained major recognition when he won Finastra’s FusionONE Hackathon. According to Forbes, he defeated other developers way older than him with his team’s winning product HYBER. It was an AI-based foreign exchange app that allows users to grow holiday money ahead of their trip.

Scott Hiett's professional journey

As a teenager in 2018, he, along with former sports lawyer Adam Whyte and gaming industry veteran David Yarnton, founded Edge, the esports payment platform. According to Business Insider, in 2020, the company raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round backed by Green Egg Ventures and former Mastercard executive Robert Reeg.

The platform was designed to streamline the contracts, payments, and logistics involved in running esports tournaments. According to his LinkedIn profile, Scott began his professional journey in London in July 2019 as an intern developer, progressing within five months to platform engineer and then senior platform engineer, specializing in full-stack web development.


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In April 2020, he entered into the role of executive leadership at Edge as co-founder and head of engineering, leading the company's core engineering team for over a year.

Besides his corporate stints, he also led multiple independent projects. He created the long-running multiplayer project SimSync in November 2018. He also went on to serve as Chief Executive Officer of MusicPals from December 2020 to January 2022. His LinkedIn profile says that he has served as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Popcall since June 2021.