The Business Journal’s annual report on young entrepreneurs, some of whom entered the working world while in their teens.

When two USC students met about two years ago, they knew they shared a passion for surfing.

A few months later, they also shared a company.

Mark Rojas and Matt Wilson started Momentum Surfboards, a surfboard and clothing company, while still students. Rojas was just 21 and Wilson 22, but once they discovered they both made their own boards Wilson on his dorm room balcony and Rojas had been doing it since he was 16 it seemed natural for them to move into an apartment together and start their own company.

Rojas grew up on New York’s Long Island, surfing hurricane and Nor’easter swells, and hand-shaped his first surfboard in a freezing shed in the snow. He knew he wanted to start his own business in the eighth grade.

Wilson hails from a Newport Beach family of entrepreneurs his parents started their own office furniture business and he began making his own skateboarding ramps and selling them to other kids when he was 8.

The partners, who started the business with about $200 worth of materials, began building surfboards that they say are lighter, stronger and more flexible than others on the market.

The duo used the resources they already had: They had access to machinery through Rojas’ work-study job in the architecture school’s workshop, and they had friends majoring in engineering help with the design. Wilson handled the money as he was an accounting major, and Rojas helmed the company’s marketing efforts using his political science major’s specialization in campaign politics.

“Every entrepreneur is faced with limited resources,” said Wilson, who graduated from USC last year and whose day job is as an auditor at Ernst & Young in Irvine. “It’s hard for a kid to go to a bank and ask for quarter of a million dollars. So we’re building a line of credit. We want to make sure that we don’t screw up when we do get that investment.”

Last spring, they launched a line of T-shirts and sold all 500 in about a month through online social networking and word of mouth.

“We really understand social networking and marketing, like through Facebook and MySpace, that a lot of companies want to understand and can’t,” said Rojas, who is in his last semester at USC.

And Rojas and Wilson aren’t done yet. They’re each developing other, separate companies that will have a hand in Momentum’s development as well: Rojas’ Sparkwave, which is about six months old, is a branding and marketing company. Wilson’s Swellsource will provide e-commerce capabilities.

FAST FACTS:

– Mark Rojas, 23, chief executive, and Matt Wilson, 24, chief financial officer, Momentum Surfboards, Hermosa Beach

– Business: Lifestyle company that sells surfboards and clothing

– Employees: Only themselves

– Financials: Total revenue of $100,000 since starting in 2006; small profit

– Fact: The pair used the USC School of Architecture’s workshop to make boards