High School Startup is a fun, hands-on program where young people learn the fundamentals of startups. Our goal is to teach students how to build innovative products that customers love. Successful teams will actually launch products and generate sales.
Students meet three weeks in a row and work closely with mentors to actually build, iterate and launch their own products.
Passionate students from any school with an entrepreneurial drive, ages 15-19. Students with skills including programming, robotics, graphic design, film-making, CAD, wood working or metal working are encouraged to apply.
Our camp will be held July 15th through August 2, 2013 in San Antonio TX at Geekdom. The price for camp is $800 total for all 3 weeks.
Our first event ever was in Austin, TX at Anderson High, and was an enormous success. Check out this news article to learn about what happened. To be keep updated on our students' progress and future events, please sign up for our mailing list.
- What happens at High School Startup?
Week 1: Design High School Startup kicks off Monday morning with students dividing into teams, pitching product ideas, and selecting an idea to run with. Students will immediately start learning Lean Startup methodology by actively applying it to their own startup ideas. Teams will then work closely with mentors to define an initial business model, target customers, and product.
Week 2: Define After an introduction to the principles of marketing students will spend this week getting their products designed and ready to sell. Students will start the week finding their customers and collecting market data. While validating their product students will focus on creating a minimally viable product to pitch to teams by Friday. Teams are expected to have a functionally prototype and will have the aid of 3D printers and other manufacturing device.
Week 3: Launch Week 3 kicks off with the focus immediately shifting to product launch. Teams work with mentors to pitch the product that they have created. The teams then deliver a demo of their product to a panel of mentors. This panel provides the feedback needed to iterate to the culminating pitch: the product demo video. The product demo video is intended to be posted online, and used to market the team's product. This video, along with a written product description will be used to initiate a Kickstarter project. Aside from the Kickstarter portion, teams will continue to refine their pitch and prototype until Friday night. During the last night of the camp teams will pitch to a panel of real investors and have an opportunity to ask for capital. This will provide students with the feedback they need to move forward along with potential funding.
The team’s Kickstarter project gives them a platform to reach potential customers, explain their project, and take pre-sales and donations to finish their project. It is hoped that the momentum of the strong peer group, mentoring and Kickstarter project will contribute to a team that follows through with creating a product that resonates with customers and has the potential to sell.
Please check out our
About page. Feel free to email us at
info@highschoolstartup.com or to call us at 813-389-3363.
