{"id":101650,"date":"2020-01-14T18:41:55","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T02:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconeer.com\/current\/?p=101650"},"modified":"2020-01-14T18:41:55","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T02:41:55","slug":"shooting-stars-bets-on-teens-for-next-generation-startup-entrepreneurship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconeer.com\/current\/shooting-stars-bets-on-teens-for-next-generation-startup-entrepreneurship\/","title":{"rendered":"Shooting Stars Bets on Teens for Next Generation Startup Entrepreneurship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shooting Stars Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on empowering youths through education, conducted its Youth Entrepreneur Camp in Silicon Valley, Jan. 3-5.<\/p>\n

A group of 30 students from various local high schools participated in the three-day camp, resulting in six teams delivering 15-minute startup pitches and Q&A, in front of a panel of professional judges and parents.<\/p>\n

The camp was organized and managed by high school senior students, who themselves were participants of prior years\u2019 Youth Entrepreneur Camps.<\/p>\n

Startups and independent businesses are the genesis of the U.S. and world economy<\/p>\n

and often fuel a country\u2019s GDP growth. Today\u2019s world-renowned companies were yesterday\u2019s startups, including Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft. As we enter the age of autonomics and robots, entrepreneurial thinking that drives continuous creativity and innovation will become the differentiating characteristics of tomorrow\u2019s hyper-competitive workplace.<\/p>\n

Shooting Stars Foundation\u2019s Nebula Youth Camp has taken a unique, future-centric, approach to empowering the youth — through business and entrepreneur-oriented education. They have also recognized that learning is more impactful through success stories of other entrepreneurs as well as peer youths. The Nebula Youth Camp (NYC) is purposely structured to partner with local startup and business leaders and is organized by youth participants. The Foundation also organizes Hackathon and STEAM-A-Thon events to highlight the need for coding skills and technical education when forming startup businesses. These events have been held across ten cities in the US.<\/p>\n

The Foundation\u2019s broader mission is to spread the message of upward socioeconomic mobility through entrepreneurship to under-privileged communities.<\/p>\n

Youth Entrepreneur Camp, January 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The three-day camp was held at ServiceNow, Santa Clara, and included on-site visits to local high-tech companies, Google and NetScout. The camp was organized by two upper class high school students who are alumnis of earlier NYC, under the guidance and supervision of Foundation staff. Both the youth organizers — Arvind Jayaraman, an 11th grader at Mission San Jose High School and Anirudh Ramasubramanian, also an 11th grader at Irvington High School — gained real-world leadership experience, which is critical for entrepreneurs as well as advantageous for highly competitive college admissions.<\/p>\n

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Seven business leaders spoke on different aspects of entrepreneurship and on creating and nurturing startup businesses (list is provided below). These presentations helped the student campers get a real-world view of how ideations turn into profitable business outcomes and what it takes to run a successful organization.<\/p>\n

Thirty student campers, ages 12 to 15, were then grouped into six \u201cfounding\u201d teams. Each student \u201cfounder\u201d was encouraged to come up with a business or a product idea before coming to the camp. The founding teams learned to collaborate with peers during the ideation process — they debated each other\u2019s ideas, brainstormed new ideas and arrived at a team consensus. Then each team began to form their startup plan.<\/p>\n

Both the youth organizers and Foundation supervisors provided one-on-one assistance to startup teams, providing further insight and guidance to get to the presentation stage.<\/p>\n

On the third day, the teams built their presentations which included: startup name and brand, its team and mission, the problem statement and proposed solution, market size, pricing and packaging, go to market options and competition. Their presentations were built leveraging materials from the professional speakers, hands on workshops, as well as the company tours they had taken. Finally, each team pitched their startup idea and business plan to a panel of three judges as well as the parents. Awards were given under the categories of Best Pitch, Best Innovative Idea and Best Business Plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot believe the participants put these pitches together in 3 days!\u201d \u2013\u00a0Judge \u2013 Karthik Chandhramoulie, Marketing Manager, Google<\/p>\n

\u201cThe amazing pitches just goes to attest Shooting Stars ability to kindle young entrepreneurial spirit!\u201d \u2013\u00a0Judge \u2013 Kevin Lee, VP Analytics, JP Morgan Chase<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great to see brilliant minds of the future in action.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Speaker \u2013 Preethy Padmanabhan, VP of Product Marketing, Panzura<\/p>\n

\u201cThis camp gave an opportunity to students to think and build on topics that otherwise is rare as well as to learn from the leaders. Altogether, this is the best way to kindle the idea of entrepreneurship in these young minds early on.\u201d \u2013 Parent \u2013 Sachendra Shetty, Senior Network Engineer and Tech lead at Google Inc.<\/p>\n

\u201cBest part was interactive lectures, workshops and exciting tours.\u201dSharadha Mahesh (10th grade, Fremont High School, Sunnyvale, CA) \u2013\u00a0Participant<\/p>\n

On-site Visits in Silicon Valley<\/strong><\/p>\n