Not every high school student's plans including going to college. Some are hoping to focus instead on building a company or developing a business idea.
A lucky few now have $100,000 each to do just that.
The Thiel Foundation on Thursday announced its newest class of fellowship winners. In addition to the cash, the organization will provide the 23 new Thiel Fellows — who include six from the Bay Area — mentorship from its network of founders, investors and scientists.
"This class was selected from the greatest number of applications we have ever received," Allyson Dias, director of the Thiel
Fellowship, said in a news release. "Despite COVID restrictions and Zoom classrooms, applicants pushed ahead and developed an astonishing number of truly impressive projects."
Named after tech founder and investor Peter Thiel, the Thiel Fellowship program is designed to support entrepreneurs who want to skip college to focus on business. Some 228 people have previously participated in the program, which was started in 2011, according to the news release.
Companies created by past winners are collectively worth some $46.8 billion, the organization said in the release. That amount doesn't include Ethereum, the blockchain underlying the ether cryptocurrency.
Here are the six Bay Area entrepreneurs who are included in the latest class of Fellows:
- Geffen Avraham, 20, San Francisco: Founded Skyline Celestial Inc., a developer of small satellites.
- Ben Botvinick, 19, Palo Alto: Founded Hyper — legally known as Frenzy Technologies Inc. — which offers a payment and customer authentication service for online businesses.
- Tejas Manohar, 22, San Francisco: Founded Hightouch — legally, Carry Technologies Inc. — which offers a service that helps companies link their customer data to their other business applications.
- Kiara Nirghin, 21, San Francisco: Founded Rather, a financial technology developer.
- Nastassia Ponomarenko, 22, San Francisco: Founded Corecircle, a developer of a social fitness app.
- Rachel Xu, 21, San Francisco: Working on a blockchain project designed to allow artists to retain ownership of and profits from their intellectual property.
