Zolli Candy's Alina Morse, Now 21, Plots Global Zero-Sugar Push

Alina Morse became the youngest founder ever to appear on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine at 13. Eight years later, at 21, she is still running Zolli Candy — and setting her sights on a global target.

Morse sat in Entrepreneur's New York City office at 13 and called the moment "a fairy tale for a girl from a small town in Michigan." She remains the youngest cover founder in the magazine's history. Today she is a senior at Michigan State University, juggling a degree with a growing candy brand and its affiliated 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Million Smiles Initiative.

The business had momentum well before the cover. Between ages nine and 13, Zolli Candy expanded through Whole Foods, Walmart and Amazon.com. Morse learned about the cover in a way any seventh-grader would: finishing the school year, checking her phone after the bell.

"The bell rang. I got my phone out of my locker. I had a missed call from my publicist," Morse said. "I called him back, and he said, 'You're going to be on the cover of a magazine.' I skipped down the hallway."

Her next thought was about her braces. "I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I still have braces. Can I do a closed-mouth shot?'" Morse said. "I did not have a lot of confidence by any stretch of the imagination. But something that stayed really consistent is my passion for my business."

What did the cover change for the company?

Morse credits those years with cementing Zolli Candy's shift from startup to established player. The magazine cover became a permanent sales tool.

"Those were really formative years in cementing our status as not just a startup but a real company," Morse said. "We use it as a catalyst for meeting with a new retailer. We'll send them a copy of the magazine with some samples, and it gives validation. That's something we've carried as a badge of honor."

Why did she choose college over full-time business?

Morse stayed in public school while building the company, working on Zolli before and after class, on weekends and during media travel and retailer meetings. She carried that habit to Michigan State, where she says the support from the university and her peers has opened doors she otherwise would have missed.

"I've experienced such an outpouring of support from my university and my peers," Morse said. "And I've had a lot of opportunities that have come from being an entrepreneur in college that I don't think I would have gotten."

She calls her dual life the "Hannah Montana" life, and says it is simply her norm. After graduation, she plans to redirect the energy she spends as a student — into the nonprofit, the product side, or her personal career. "The sky's the limit," she said.

How does she balance school and entrepreneurship?

Morse rejects the premise entirely.

"The idea of entrepreneurial balance is kind of a hoax. There is no balance. You have to live it," Morse said. "If I get a call from our 1-800 hotline, I'm picking it up. It doesn't matter if it's midnight. That is what being an entrepreneur is."

What comes next for Zolli Candy?

Morse has a defined ambition for the next eight years: to make Zolli Candy the No. 1 zero-sugar candy company globally — a goal she describes as "crazy audacious" but already in progress.

On the nonprofit side, the target is just as concrete. "Through the Million Smiles Initiative, I want every kid in America to have a clean mouth, a healthy smile, and a Zollipop in their hand," Morse said. "Every year we've been able to grow, we've been able to give more."

Her advice to founders hesitating over a first step borrows from her own childhood start: "Think like a seven-year-old. They don't have the fear of failure that adults have," Morse said. "It may seem like it's a naive perspective, but really it's a very tenacious and curious perspective."

The advice she would give her 13-year-old self points in the same direction: "Smile with your teeth. Don't be so worried about what other people are going to think."

With graduation ahead and a growth record now spanning more than a decade, Morse's bet is that the college years have added to the business rather than subtracted from it — and that the zero-sugar market has room for a founder who started at nine.