Every year the Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA!) conducts a 7-month training program that turns two dozen local middle and high-school students into real-life entrepreneurs and business owners. The Chamber Foundation and Loudoun Economic Development Authority work with business coaches and local business mentors to nurture kids’ ideas about how to change the world through their unique business plans.
This year’s class pitched to an esteemed panel of investors in April and awarded $5,000 in investments to six start-ups they believe have the greatest chance of success. Along the way, students learned not just how to put together a business plan and market their products and services, but all about leadership and community partnerships, and clearly made friends for life. They gain confidence and poise far beyond their years and give all of us hope that the next generation is both willing and able to tackle some of the tough problems facing our society.
In short, the kids are okay. Here’s just a brief glimpse of this year’s winners with one extra that we think demonstrates the outsized concern kids feel for our future wellbeing.
Ethan Chisholm, a 10th grader from St. Paul VI Catholic High School, was the season’s big winner, taking home a $1,500 investment for his healthy snack for the outdoors, NaTrail. You may have read about Ethan already – he’s an accomplished musician and played violin with the Honors Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in February. Ethan also loves hiking, camping, fishing and mountaineering, and his presentation included shots of him on a 14,000-foot peak in Colorado. Because he was perpetually frustrated by never being able to find healthy snacks for the outdoors – they either have nuts or are loaded with sugar, not to mention the fact that their packaging ruins the scenery when discarded improperly – he created NaTrail.
The ingredients are simple: freeze-dried fruit with no added sugar, quinoa and puffed rice. Quinoa is a plant-based protein that gives long-lasting energy. Fruit lends itself to three snack flavors: Tropical Blend, Strawberry Banana, and Mixed Berry, each wrapped in biodegradable packaging. He’ll use his investment to complete work on his trademark and to complete his first production run.
If you’re skeptical something healthy can taste good, one of the judges ate half a bag of the Strawberry Banana during the panel’s deliberations. (We know because we pinched the other half and it’s great.) Locally or nationally, the snacks will be available from Ethan’s soon to be launched website natrailfoods.com, and you might just find him at the Appalachian Trail Festival in the Gap with some fellow St. Veronica’s Rangers (see p. X). When not building his business and practicing violin and piano, he’s working on attaining the rank of Master Ranger, equivalent to Eagle Scout.
What he learned from the program is, “Nothing is impossible, which seems kind of cliché, but going from just an idea in the beginning to selling an actual product in just six months is kind of incredible.” Ethan will have the opportunity to pitch his business plan at the national level 2023 YEA! Saunders National Competition June 16 so watch our Facebook feed for details.
We reached Mahima Atmavilas, a Freedom High School 10th grader and CEO of Topped With Love, at the DECA International Career Development Conference in Orlando the weekend after her YEA! pitch netted her $1000. Her baking business focuses on providing customers with allergen-free dessert options. Her inspiration came from her mother, who is allergic to eggs, but there are many ingredients that cause allergic reactions, she explained, and most people who suffer from these only have one or two options when they want something sweet.
She will primarily be distributing desserts through her website, toppedwithlove.biz, but hopes to participate in the EatLoco Farmer’s Market in One Loudoun through the Fall and Winter. She could use a commercial kitchen that is available during the hours when she’s not in school (a common complaint among entrepreneurs and non-profits alike), but eventually hopes to have her own brick-and-mortar bakery – “something I’ve always dreamed of.” She adds, “For now, I want to take this business as far as I can” before college intervenes. In her spare time, she volunteers tutoring and works summers as a camp counselor.
Mahima is most grateful to YEA! for “giving me really good insight into how the life of an entrepreneur works – the hustle and the grind and the hard work that goes into it. I feel like it’s put me in a really good place for the next few years with my working ethic.”
Pranav Kalidindi, Rockridge High School 9th Grader and another $1,000 awardee, founded Stress Relief Buddy, an AI-driven app designed to be integrated with the Apple Watch in such a way that it helps prevent stress from causing health problems. His inspiration came from the sudden death from a heart attack suffered by a neighbor who otherwise seemed healthy. “He ran marathons and everything,” Pranav said.
We’ll credit him with the quote of pitch night when he said, his tool uses a “custom machine learning algorithm to predict and reduce stress. We made predicting stress and priority because once you are stressed, the damage has already been done.” That makes his own research into the precursors of stress an ongoing effort and may be one of the reasons why he is drawn to medicine as a career and wants to study neurology in particular.
Like Mahima, Pranav has taken advantage of many opportunities to advance his entrepreneurial experience and facility for solving technical issues. Working with Loudoun Innovation 4-H Club, he was invited to attend both a national Microsoft TechSpark event where he met Microsoft President Brad Smith, and the 4-H Ignite Summit in D.C. this March. Asked how a 15-year-old comes to design a machine learning algorithm, he casually notes that it’s written in Python – a computer language he taught himself -- and is housed on AWS, Amazon’s cloud service. Databases for health-related responses to stress factors also are available on the Internet, he explained. That part, he says, wasn’t as complicated as the legal issues involved in processing individual health information through the cloud and on getting Apple’s help in integrating an app into the App Store, but he is confident he has time to work all that out.
The crowd’s fan favorite, for both precociousness and charm, was clearly Abhishek Shanbhag, a 7th grader from Brambleton Middle School who founded Bizzlearn.co, a financial education company for 10- to 16-year-olds. “Did you know,” he asked, “that only 24% of 18- to 24-year-olds can answer basic financial literacy questions?” The clearest indicator of this ignorance: the existence of more than $1.75 Trillion in student financial debt. Parents don’t have the time, or sometimes even the knowledge to educate their kids on the basics of how to handle money, so Abhishek has built an engaging, interactive process with modules on budgeting, investing and other topics and turned it into a learning game.
He has not only worked with web developers to produce a fully functional website but also employed AI software to create content for each of his learning modules. Because, as he allows, “AI is not always reliable,” he hopes to work with local community banks, financial advisors and personal finance teachers (“there aren’t many but there are a few”) to help validate those concepts. He’ll then license the software to school districts with an annual subscription and directly to customers for a one-time $50 payment. In asking for a $1,500 investment, he closed with, “So do yourself a favor and let the money work for you!” to hearty applause.
With the $500 he received, he’ll continue to work with UI and UX developers to expand the learning system to include more video, especially when it comes to the basics of stock investing, which he has only done himself for the last couple of years. (Remember, he’s 12.) In much the way online traffic school videos work, Abhishek’s system presents information, then lets students apply themselves on the material with questions involving real-life scenarios. There’s even a leaderboard you can attain with answering questions correctly.
What’s clear through his own experience is that you’re never too young to appreciate the value of money. He played travel soccer for six years, then started coaching younger players for $10/hour. Now he plays cricket, where he’s a team captain. While he loves the sport, he’s not thinking of going pro; when he’s older, he’d rather own the team.
Entrepreneurs Rhea Ganta and Sarina Virmani, 8th grade friends from Nysmith School, took a similar approach to the gamification of learning with their app STEMtri, designed to help students gain a love of learning through fun STEM education. Sarina credits Rhea as being the team’s wordsmith and marketer while she’s more focused on the many steps involved in bringing their project to fruition but adds, “We’re both very organized.”
Says Rhea, “One thing that makes our business different is that we're actually middle school students that are in our target demographic. So, we have the passion, and we understand what our target demographic wants.” For fun, Sarina is both an ice skater and sings with the National Children’s Chorus in D.C. Both are on debate teams, and Rhea plays basketball and piano. “We both are in the National Junior Honor Society and both like to volunteer in our community, which will help us build meaningful partnerships,” Rhea adds.
Tapthi Arun, an 11th grader at Rockridge High School, brought an actual prototype of her ClearSafe reusable water bottle with a detachable container at the base useful for storing small items like keys or earbuds. The water bottle is BPA-free, double insulated and vacuum sealed so it can keep beverages hot or cold. With her investment of $500, she hopes to help to fund her first shipment of 100 water bottles by July, which she’ll sell on Facebook, Etsy and Amazon and in partnership with local gyms.
In her view, what makes her an entrepreneur is that, “I had an idea and I stuck with it and I did a lot of work to make it a viable business. A lot of people have ideas but it takes a lot of effort to turn that idea into something real.”
Not winning an award, but just one indication that the next generation is worried about the “big issues” was Sahasra Mogulla, a 9th grader at Independence High School. Her big worry: that not enough people want to be farmers anymore, raising the specter that “everyone’s grandkids are going to be living off of pills a century from now instead of actual food.” Her Farmers In Training program is designed to encourage future farmers by giving them access to an online database for help in getting started and growing crops or livestock as well as the opportunity to volunteer and learn from others at local farms. That way, “they’ll be able to connect with local farmers in their community who will make a memorable impact” on their career choices.
Her own mother grows Indian ethnic vegetables in her spare time, while working another job, a common situation for many local farmers. Even though she didn’t come away with an investment, she’d still like to help show people that farming is a valid career choice.
Applications for students are open NOW until June 12, and the application may be downloaded here: loudounchamber.org/yea. The 2023-2024 program will then run from October through early May. There are also mentorship opportunities for business leaders in the community to work with a student one-on-one for several sessions during the 7-month course. If interested, they can reach out directly to the program director Faith Shoup at fshoup@loudounchamber.org.