Kick Start Your Entrepreneur Mindset in High School
Palo Alto, CA (PRWEB) April 23, 2015 -- Move over, Mark Zuckerberg. While the co-founder of Facebook may have started the social network in college, a growing number of teenagers are setting up successful companies even before they’ve learnt to drive.
Take Shubham Banerjee, the 13-year-old eighth-grader from Santa Clara who launched Braigo Labs which aims to become the first purveyor of low-cost, compact Braille printers. For Shubham, his startup journey went from one school science fair victory, a few national accolades, $35,000 of his parents' savings and a visit to the White House. Intel Capital has invested in the teenager's company making Shubham the world's youngest tech entrepreneur to receive venture capital funding.
Grooming this new generation of upcoming CEOs is what Young Outliers, a boutique design entrepreneur summer camp, excels at. Based in Palo Alto, Young Outliers focuses on helping students aged 6 to 17 find what they love doing, then igniting their potential through an entrepreneurial Silicon Valley mindset. Last year, the camp saw 200 young learners graduate with the experience of having built products that were eventually sold at the summer camp marketplace.
Their latest Game Changers camp studio is a unique program for high school students that brings the world of startups to life. This exciting studio empowers teens in times when they are stressed from grades, tests, and college applications. This studio is designed for high school campers to “apply and fulfil” their education learning against real-world opportunities instead of merely "comply" with expectations and processes. In three weeks, campers learn the principles of Design Thinking, Lean Start-up, and Digital Media, culminating in a Startup Fund Competition—dubbed “Dolphin Tank”—where teams compete for mentorship, after school internships, and potential funding. Participants also undergo a paid internship during the summer camp, working with younger campers in a highly rewarding learning environment.
Game Changers is a creative incubator studio dedicated to “What matters to teens” giving them a voice through design thinking activities. Teens are digital natives and with the evolution of technology, have the opportunity to combine their creative and digital know-how to practice real-world entrepreneurship. In the studio, teens will meet likeminded friends and create ideas together. The collaborative environment expands on the importance of friendships and social interactions for high school students which wellsprings to prepare for the future. In the camp, together they will engage in meaningful, fun, and cutting-edge activities. The studio offers the inter-disciplinary design activities, for example, backpack design, that highlight subject fields so teens will participate in applying geometry in user-oriented design as well as providing solutions for back problems by applying biology and communicate their ideas to target audiences through language arts.
For this coming summer, Young Outliers will be partnering with BootUp.
BootUp is a complete, global ecosystem designed to create better entrepreneurs and accelerate their startups, headquartered in Menlo Park to train young entrepreneurs from its Game Changers Studio.
“The four elements of our business work harmoniously to increase the chance of success for our global startups” say Mukul Agarwal and Marco ten Vaanholt, Managing Partners at BootUp.
BootUp World, our Silicon Valley launch pad, provides shared services including legal, accounting, event hosting and video production. BootUp Academy provides customized programs for corporate venture, foreign startups, foreign executive missions and online education. BootUp Ventures, our acceleration and growth arm, provides hands-on services and funding to help companies penetrate and grow both in the US and Global markets. Last but not least, the Cuckoo’s Nest Club provides a social environment where our startup CEOs mingle with the ‘who’s who’ of the ‘global silicon valley’. This highly charged ecosystem creates an ideal environment for the long term success of each and every entrepreneur.
By starting them young, Young Outliers and BootUp hope to ignite creative mindset and entrepreneurship early for K-12 students.
“We’re extremely happy to support the Young Outliers design entrepreneurship summer camp. Our focus at BootUp has always been to start with education around entrepreneurship and help increase the success rate of entrepreneurs by using proven methodologies and approaches. By partnering with programs like Young Outliers we increase our ecosystem and contribute to even the youngest of entrepreneurs. Say Mukul and Marco, Managing Partners at BootUp. “giving back and educating even the youngest of entrepreneurs is just part of our DNA”
“It is the educational experience of the future, where students explore passions and collectively develop ideas to solve real-world problems. They also learn and develop their executive skills like taking risks, climbing out of failure, time management, teamwork, and problem solving etc. said Steve Hsia, Co-founder of Young Outliers. “Besides learning from the pros, this partnership means that Game Changers now have the tremendous opportunity of interning with BootUp and getting their hands dirty on cool, real-world projects,”
Young Outliers co-founders Steve Hsia (entrepreneur and angel investor) and Gigi Carunungan (started Synapse School, one of the sought-after schools in Bay Area with cutting-edge learning model) are intersecting design, entrepreneurship and inter-disciplinary learning to empower students in meaningful and fun learning experiences. The Young Outliers’ Game Changers Design Entrepreneur Incubator is now open for applications. Find out more about Young Outliers at http://www.youngoutliers.com.
STEVE HSIA, Young Outliers, http://www.youngoutliers.com, +1 (650) 3802824, [email protected]
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