Graduating Class of TYE 2019-students, judges & program coordinators (TiE Silicon Valley/INDTVUSA)

Four teams from various Silicon Valley middle/high schools competed in TiE Youth Entrepreneur (TYE) program in March 16, 2019. The winning team will represent TYE Silicon Valley at the Finals scheduled in Boston from June 19 – 21.

TYE is a global program fostering future generations of entrepreneurs by teaching high school students the rewards and challenges of becoming an entrepreneur. TYE is an academy focusing on entrepreneurship, where student teams utilize modern skills and tools to build a concept using customer feedback, iteration, and lightweight business models. TYE is designed to teach entrepreneurship and leadership skills to high school students. 30 chapters across the globe send their best to compete in a global competition.

“TYE program’s objective is to teach high school kids 3 C’s – Creativity, Communications and Complex problem solving,” says Jay Viswanathan, executive director for TiE Silicon Valley. “While these skills are paramount for the success of the next generation business leaders and entrepreneurs, today’s school curriculum has limited focus on these skills. TYE program, in essence, complements the basic skills taught in schools.”

“It is enriching to see the transformation of these highly motivated students. At the start of the program, the students are often confused and uncertain of what to expect. During the course, they identify an idea that is important to them and build a product around it. This gives them a great sense of ownership because it is their idea that they are pursuing” According to Shivani Bhasin, program coordinator for TYE.

The graduating class of TYE 2019 were taught the core skills such as customer validation, design thinking, business model & team building – skills required to become successful entrepreneurs. Many industry leaders generously contributed their time and effort to support the TYE program. Educators from reputed institutions such as Naeem Zafar(UC Berkeley), Anurag Mairal(Stanford University) and Raj Jaswa(IIT Bombay) brought the curriculum to life. Serial Entrepreneurs such as Sridhar Gunapu, Nikhil Goel, and Anshul Jain also shared their wisdom with students.

TYE 2018 – 2019 Participating Teams & Their Product Ideas

iDentity: Meeting some great people at conferences, events or parties? iDentity can help exchange contact info in seconds with your preferred profile using a unique QR code and the click of a picture on your phone.

Team (l-r): Aryan Shah, Anish Sundar, Soam Desai and Arnav Simha (TiE Silicon Valley/INDTVUSA)
Team (l-r): Aryan Shah, Anish Sundar, Soam Desai and Arnav Simha (TiE Silicon Valley/INDTVUSA)

MorePrep: SAT Prep is expensive and  inaccessible to many. MorePrep is solving that problem by creating an online marketplace, providing free practice tests and crowdsourced questions, all on one platform. http://www.moreprep.com/

Team (l-r): Isha Chadalavada, Vidya Chimata, Soumil Gad, Neha Manoj and Doniv Vinod (TiE Silicon Valley/INDTVUSA)
Team (l-r): Isha Chadalavada, Vidya Chimata, Soumil Gad, Neha Manoj and Doniv Vinod (TiE Silicon Valley/INDTVUSA)

Swiftrance: Long lines and wait times at events are tiresome and inefficient. Swiftrance is a facial recognition app that will help event-goers walk right in and drastically cut wait times. Check out http://twitter.com/Swiftrance1

Team (l-r): Jai Panchal, Aditya Jain, Rushil Prajapati and Mahatru Guddamsetty
Team (l-r): Jai Panchal, Aditya Jain, Rushil Prajapati and Mahatru Guddamsetty

XRGlove: Poor hand hygiene in food workers is the largest cause of food borne illnesses in the US. RFID based XRGlove is a band that will help ensure and enforce hand hygiene through compliance report and alerts.

Team (l-r): Vaasu Singh and Heer Nanda
Team (l-r): Vaasu Singh and Heer Nanda

“The last few weeks have been very rewarding. The students were exposed to critique from a number of successful business leaders in Silicon Valley who ran global business enterprises. The students learnt to reconcile conflicting views and internalize the feedback given to them from mentors. This is a skill that is hard to teach in coursework” According to Raji Gollakota, program coordinator for TYE.

Through the competition, TYE Silicon Valley picked the top 2 teams – XRGlove and MorePrep. One of these two teams will represent TYE Silicon Valley in TYE Globals. These teams will continue to evolve the product for the next two months. All teams did a phenomenal job building their business plan and presenting their pitches. It was very difficult to pick the winners.” According to Veena Gundavelli, one of the five judges. “Most importantly, this competition is not the end for the teams that did not make the cut. I am confident that these teams will recover, rebound and improvise the product idea. The most important skill that the entrepreneur should learn is to quickly recover from failure and iterate till success. Grit and passion bring out the best in the entrepreneurs.”

“Sky is the limit for TYE program. We have big goals for this program. Now that we have a firm grounding, we are looking to bring more diversity to the program – socio-economic, ethnic, and gender diversity. This program is blessed in that we are embedded in Silicon Valley. We have the world’s largest tech companies, the world’s best universities and the world’s most vibrant venture capital market right in our back yard. It is the responsibility of the leaders in our community to connect the dots for these young entrepreneurs,” according to Sree Chadalavada, program coordinator for TYE. “It is important to develop a pathway for these young entrepreneurs to keep the fire going. As a next step, we are showcasing these teams in TiECon 2019, the world’s largest entrepreneur gathering. We hope to connect these young entrepreneurs to their prospect customers, fellow entrepreneurs and leading venture capitalists. Our objective is to continue to mentor these young entrepreneurs through their entrepreneurial journey.”

We started the TYE program in TiE Silicon Valley chapter in 2016. It is a complex enterprise to run a 6-month program solely by unpaid volunteers. Many Charter Members of TiE Silicon Valley, successful business leaders and entrepreneurs contributed to TYE program because they believed in mentoring the young entrepreneurs and the social cause” according to Srini Madala, charter member, program chair of youth programs and the founding member of TYE at Silicon Valley. “We received tremendous cooperation from the community and if we were to scale this program we will need more support in terms of time, attention and money.”