Mallory Kievman, 13, Invents Cure For Hiccups And Becomes A CEO In The Process

A 13-year-old girl has not only supposedly cured the hiccups, but she has become a CEO in the process.

Mallory Kievman is CEO and founder of Hiccupops, a company that might just have cured one of the world's oldest and most annoying conditions, according to The New York Times

Kievman is reportedly preparing to launch her product, the Hiccupop, a hiccup-stopping lollipop of her own invention, with a patent pending, financial backers, and a team of business consultants.

Kievman says that she got the idea after trying to tame a stubborn bout of hiccups two years ago by using any home remedy she came upon: Drinking saltwater, sipping water out of an upside-down cup, eating spoonfuls of sugar, slurping pickle juice.

I'm still tweaking the taste, she tells The Times. But the combination of ingredients triggers a set of nerves in your throat and mouth that are responsible for the hiccup reflex arc... It basically over-stimulates those nerves and cancels out the message to hiccup.

Speculation as to whether Hiccupops is a profitable company has provoked some people to come out and advocate for the 13-year-old CEO.

It's very rare, when you're evaluating businesses, that you can envision a company or product being around 100 years from now, Danny Briere, a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Startup Connecticut, which nurtures new companies, including Hiccupops, and is a regional affiliate of the Startup America Partnership, told The Times. Hiccupops is one of those things. It solves a very simple, basic need, he added.

While the company only holds two employees, Kievman is listed on the company's organizational chart as CEO and head of research and development next to her father, Adam Kievman, who is head of 'Adult Supervision.'

It's Mallory's show . . . I'm trying to do my best to support it but to also not, you know, drive it, Kievman said in an interview with The Times.

Dad is helping with a lot of the business stuff, Mallory added. And he's also helping me handle stuff like using the stove.

It was around a year ago that Briere came in to the picture when he met the Kievman's at the Connecticut Invention Convention, a talent fair for young tinkerers.

With Kievman taking home prizes for innovation and patentability, she presented her lollipops to investors and state officials, and even helped ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

The hardest part of the business aspect, I would say, is I'm a minor, so there's a lot of different contract things that are difficult, She told Tech Cocktail.

As the development stages for Hiccupops are pretty much figured out, Kievman now has to find a manufacturer for her lollipops.

She goes on to tell the tech publication that her goal is to make Hiccupops a staple in drug stores nurse's offices. But as that secondary to more important things, she adds, I have recently been applying to high schools.