The Boston innovation ecosystem has long been linked to colleges and universities throughout the area. But now, encouraging entrepreneurial spirit among students isn’t limited to higher education. Just look a little west of the city and you’ll see a prime example of a high school getting in on the startup game with Beaver Country Day in Chestnut Hill, Mass.
The school offers students the chance to take an entrepreneurship elective, part of which involves a pitch contest that was held this past Tuesday. At Beaver Country Day’s competition, the CEOs of the three pre-selected student teams - Vend U, Smart Flow and Autumn Skateboards - pitched to a panel of judges.
A natural progression to pitching
Leading up to the pitch contest, these high schools students have gone through all of the steps every startup goes through before they have a minimal viable product and start pitching to investors.
“We run the course in a shark tank format,” said Lisa Trask, who co-teaches the entrepreneurship class with Kevin Bau. "For the first half of the term, students focus on idea-spotting, looking for problems to solve, and then choosing the most pressing problem pitch. For their midterm exam, we have them write an abbreviated business plan. As a class, we see which business plans are worth pursuing, and the three winners become our CEOs.”
"As a teacher, it’s hard for me to just say, ‘Go. Come up with an idea.’”
"The second part of the term is about interview rounds, where the CEOs establish which strengths they need to have in their team and pick who could bring those strengths,” she continued. "The final exam is the Shark Day competition.”
Both Trask and Bau handle portions of the curricula based on their past career experience. Bau, who used to work on Wall Street, tackles all of the financial concepts. Meanwhile, Trask channels her knowledge of the digital marketing space, helping students develop their product ideas and work on their branding.
Despite the clear progression of the course, Trask and Bau explained that as with any kind of entrepreneurship, it can be pretty unstructured compared to traditional courses.
“We wanted to create the class partially because it’s a hip thing to do, but it’s also more about how entrepreneurship fits in with the type of education Beaver has to offer,” said Bau. "We like our students to deal with open-ended, poorly defined problems.”
“For the first week, there are some deer in the headlight looks,” added Trask. "As a teacher, it’s hard for me to just say, ‘Go. Come up with an idea.’”
And students did come up with ideas, and I spoke with the CEOs of the three conceptual companies chosen to pitch at Shark Day this term to see how their stint in entrepreneurship went. From what it seems, the class went well, even though it covered uncharted territories in terms of their prior academic and life experience.
“We really got to experience the fundamentals of what being entrepreneur means,” said Joey Searle, who led Autumn Skateboards and tried to come up with a stronger skateboard that wouldn’t break.
“The experience inspired me to learn more and more about the field,” explained Julia Fragioni. “I could see myself maybe becoming an entrepreneur eventually.” For context, that’s after she and her team of peers came up with Vend U, which would let students design school swag and sell them in vending machines, during the class this term.
Exposure to entrepreneurship is the first step
It’s a long way off until these high school kids have to decide if they’re going to live the entrepreneur life. In the very least, all of the students were exposed to new topics and had to deal with situations they weren’t used to, such as being a leader.
“I never had to manage other people before,” said Michael Schaff, who designed Smart Flow, a valve that would let people shut off the water in their houses remotely. “It was hard to keep people on task and moving. And I also had to come up with our financial projections. I had no idea how to do that, so I had to get help to make them realistic, but appetizing to investors.”
Speaking of investors, these students pitched to real people involved in the startup community on Tuesday during the Shark Day competition. Liam Donohue of .406 Ventures, Mike Hirshland of Resolute Ventures and Brij Patel, the CEO at Fetch Storage, served as judges. There were guest speakers coming in and out of the course throughout the term, but this was the first time the students had to pitch to venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.
“At first, it was a little scary, but then when I started presenting with my team, I felt pretty comfortable,” said Fragioni. "I saw it as a chance to meet people who I could reach out to when I’m further into my career, and making those connections so early was once-in-lifetime opportunity.”
“The night before, I was fine,” Schaff told me. "But that morning when I got there, I was nervous. When I began the pitch, instinct took over and I was completely calm. My biggest fear was that the investors would ask some out-to-get-you questions, but they didn’t. They were all straightforward questions that I had the answers to.”
While none of the students are sure if they’ll pursue the products that they began during the entrepreneurship class, they can at least chalk it up to experience that not many people their age have had. After all, it’s not typical for high school students to have much free reign, so an entire course meant to shape disruptors isn’t common at that level.
“As a student, I’m used to people normally telling me what to do and then doing it,” Searle put it nicely. "This was different. It was more about me focusing on what I wanted to do, what I was passionate about and running with it.”
Image via Beaver Country Day.
