Kristo Käärmann, co-founder and CEO of TransferWise In the summer of 1993, aged 12, Mr Käärmann took a job at a business directory, verifying that the companies were indeed at the given address, their phone numbers were correct and the directors really existed. “It wasn’t an investigative job,” he reflects. But it was hard work. “I was on my feet every day.” It gave the young Estonian a chance to see capitalism up close as his country became independent after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. “It was very chaotic. Everything was new.” His next schoolboy job was planting trees in forests, which he liked for being “outdoorsy”. But the chief lesson he learnt from these stints was that work paid. “I could buy things like french fries, which were super-exotic.”

https://www.ft.com/content/852cbdac-6c89-11e7-b9c7-15af748b60d0