The business & entrepreneurship department launched two incubator courses this school year, and the young entrepreneurs have been going full tilt all year. Here is a quick look at the first year of these classes. Watch for a full length feature article on the classes in the winter issue of Harker Magazine in December 2019.
In summer 2017, Harker’s business and entrepreneurship department held an incubator class for high school entrepreneurs, one of the first in the nation. The class was an intensive, student-led and community-supported program in which student entrepreneurs received a seed grant, mentorship, academic curriculum and internal support from a student leadership team to help them develop and grow their startup companies. The class was so successful and well received it was converted into a full academic class for the 2018-19 school year. Read about the 2017 class here.
The two new academic incubator classes began in fall 2018: Honors Entrepreneurship: Startup Incubator 1 and Honors Entrepreneurship: Startup Incubator 2.
In Incubator 1, students created and commercialized their own product or service. “Teams are led through the Lean Startup processes of developing hypotheses about a business concept, testing those hypotheses, adapting and continually iterating,” said Michael Acheatel, business & entrepreneurship teacher. “Once students have validated their business concept hypothesis, they receive a seed grant to propel their business plan into reality, thereby learning business foundations in entrepreneurship, marketing, economics, finance and business operations firsthand. “
Incubator 2 is geared toward students who have already launched a company and are focused on growing their business. “Students are led through three-week long ‘sprints’ where students identify their individual goals and tasks at the beginning of the sprint and present a demo of their accomplishments at the end of the sprint,” said Acheatel.
Students in each of the courses receive coaching and mentorship from entrepreneurs, investors and business experts who visit the classes. Students also get out to visit with Bay Area startups and venture capitalists to experience entrepreneurship at the next level. “We had eight student companies complete the course this year and enrollment for next year is growing rapidly,” said Acheatel.
A key element in the classes was provided by Next47, a venture capital firm. The company supported the program as an essential part of education and donated $10,000 in venture funds. “We believe that entrepreneurial skills are life skills,” said Lak Ananth, CEO and managing partner of Next47. “Being passionate about an idea, taking the time to think through it, market it, and have the wherewithal to see it through – these are skills that are necessary to succeed in life. Exposing kids to this process is incredibly valuable. Even if these businesses don’t succeed, the process will inculcate in them the fire to keep getting better.”
Mentors are a critical element of the entire process and Phu Hoang has contributed his time to helping two of the ongoing ventures climb the ladder to success. He has been working with Mahi Kolla, grade 11, founder of The Minty Boutique, and Nishka Ayyar ’19 and Riya Gupta ’19, founders of of PromElle, to refine and channel their efforts as they expand their businesses.
“Mahi is an extraordinarily gifted young woman,” said Hoang. “She is hard-working, a very fast learner, and has tremendous passion for her company. It’s just so rare to see that at such a young age. What has been such a pleasure mentoring Mahi is that she can understand and soak in complex advice and suggestions and builds a plan to execute on them. I feel like my mentoring of Mahi is at the same level of strategic thinking and complexity as my mentoring of much older and more experienced founders of venture-backed companies.”
PromElle, Ayyar and Gupta’s venture, also has been around a couple of years. “PromElle is a more mature business than the Minty Boutique,” said Hoang, noting both women have now graduated. “They had done a lot of things right before I got involved. First of all, the idea of PromElle is brilliant and very needed. But they actually market-tested the concept by hosting a prom dress exchange at Harker when they were freshmen to test their idea. Most adult entrepreneurs don’t test their ideas that effectively. Once they got clear confirmation of the value that they can bring, they were able to get app development help at a very reasonable cost.”
Hoang, who holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and was an early engineer at Yahoo, noted he has been working in technology all his life. “I enjoy working with entrepreneurs to help them realize their vision, build their products and grow their businesses. My son joined Harker as a freshman in 2017, and I got to see how advanced and entrepreneurial the kids are, so I reached out to Michael at some point to offer to contribute.”
This year, Incubator 1 startups included Sero, started by Cameron Jones ’19, an intelligent bike assistant with anti-theft and fitness tracking capabilities; PeerCoco, by Sayon Biswas ’19 and Nemo Yang ‘19, which is a peer-to-peer college consulting network for international high school students; GetTime, started by Claire Luo, grade 10, a student-focused time-management app that allows users to input tasks, set timers and track progress in a gamified manner; and PolyForm, the brainchild of Nakul Bajaj, grade 11, who is developing a platform for voters to answer polls and discuss policy at the local, state, and national level in civilized manner.
At the beginning of the year, these students identified problems they and other students face in daily life or that they see in the world. “They begin to assess the problem from a business perspective by looking at how these problems are currently being solved (competitive analysis) and identifying who has these problems (market analysis),” said Acheatel. Students then conduct customer interviews to validate their assumptions, then begin the solution ideation process to conceptualize their proposed solution, noted Acheatel.
In February, students pulled their projects together and pitched to a panel of investors for funding to develop a prototype of their product, known as the minimum viable product (MVP). “All four [Incubator 1] companies successfully raised seed funding and have since developed their prototypes,” Acheatel noted. “Now that the entrepreneurs have had three months to develop their products, they will pitching to investors in late May for funding to fully launch their companies,” he said.
There were also four Incubator 2 companies. The Minty Boutique, a luxe stationery company that utilizes unique designs and functional products to cater to the #BOSS lifestyle; PromElle, the first peer-to-peer marketplace for teen fashion where teen girls can lend/rent or buy/sell formal, party and everyday wear; Nanoseed, developed by Jason Huang ’19 and Suraj Pakala ’19, a nonprofit organization in the field of microfinance that empowers rural Chinese farmers to form cooperatives and build sustainable businesses; and PillBot, being developed by Johnny Wang ’19 as an automated solution to medicine dispensary with a tamper-proof design and overdose protection.
Each Incubator 2 company pitched at sHarker Tank – BECon for $15K in prize money provided by venture firm Next47. Read all about that effort here.
PromElle took first place at sHarker Tank BEcon and presented at the Association for Corporate Growth Silicon Valley’s 2019 GROW awards. Officers are currently in communication with SharkTank about appearing on their show.
The Minty Boutique took second place at sHarker Tank BEcon and was written up in a blog post by Stukent. Kolla is excited about the year’s progress. “In August through September, we launched our first iteration of our academic planners which sold out within a week,” she said. “From there, we reached out Harker to become the new manufacturer of the Harker academic planners. We are currently working with the freshmen class dean and the Office of Communication to finalize this partnership.”
PillBot took third place at sHarker Tank BEcon and received funding and support from various nationwide competitions. Wang found the class valuable for his development needs. “The class provided a good framework for the students to build and grow their businesses,” he said. “The curriculum gives us enough flexibility so we can focus on individual business goals. The majority of instruction is not done by lecturing but one-on-one mentoring with both teachers within the B&E department and external mentors. By leveraging on the Harker alumni/parent network, we are able to learn much more than just listening to lectures.”
Nanoseed earned fourth place at sHarker Tank BEcon and has grown to more than 20 branches. It held a benefit concert that raised $9,000 to fund loans. “To me though, what was most memorable about the class was the variety of people we get to interact with,” said Huang, “from lawyers and mentors coming in to talk to us, helping us with legal or financial issues, to us being able to pitch directly to real investors who provided valuable feedback on how we could improve our organization.” Read this 2017 article on the company’s inception.
The students also pitched to Ananth and principals at Next47’s headquarters in Palo Alto and visited Tesla and Manticore Games.
The class continues in the fall with new and returning entrepreneurs. Watch for the comprehensive article in the winter issue of Harker Magazine, coming out in December!
This article originally appeared in the spring 2016 Harker Quarterly.
Harker DECA Excels at State Conference
Almost 90 students traveled to San Diego in early March to compete with more than 2,000 other California DECA members at the State Career Development Conference. Harker garnered six first place wins, a pair of second place wins, a quartet of third place wins and more than a dozen additional top 10 awards.
During the four days there, students competed, attended workshops, took protégé exams and went to Belmont Park for a little fun and relaxation.
A highlight of the trip was Harker’s chapter advisor, Juston Glass, passing on his 2015 Advisor of the Year award to the 2016 recipient.
Two days were dedicated to written events and role-play competitions. At the mini awards, 36 Harker students were recognized for achievements in their respective competitions.
At the grand awards ceremony on the final day of the conference, Harker DECA earned an astounding 26 top 10 wins. Additionally, 15 teams qualified for the International Career Development Conference (ICDC), which will be held in Nashville, Tenn., in April.
Overall, this conference was a huge success for Harker DECA, not only in terms of competitions, but also in terms of experience. Students had a lot of fun in the SoCal sun and achieved competitive excellence. Harker DECA proved once again to be a top competitor in the most competitive state in the nation. DECA members are looking forward to ICDC!
DECA Astounds with Record-Breaking Wins at Annual Conference
Harker DECA chapter members garnered 19 top three wins at the 2016 Silicon Valley Career Development Conference in early January and 42 teams received mini awards. In addition to the excellent competitive results, three members were elected to the Silicon Valley District Action Team for the 2016-17 year: Alisa Su, grade 10, as vice president of public relations; Erin Liu, grade 9, as vice president of fashion; and Haley Tran, grade 11, as executive vice president.
Students were jazzed by the results and support they received from fellow students.
“The energy when a Harker DECA member won was unprecedented, and all the other students in the room were shocked by the amount of energy our chapter brought,” noted Vanessa Tyagi, grade 10, director of communications for Harker DECA.
“The support for each competitor was unbelievable,” added Alexander Mo, grade 11, director of written events. “I really think that Harker DECA impressed schools not only with our competitive results, but also our bond as a chapter.”
Changes within the chapter have improved results. “We’ve had the best competitive results this year since the inception of the business and entrepreneurship department,” said Sophia Luo, grade 12, Harker DECA CEO. “Thanks to our newly formed officer mentorship program, many of our members worked one-on-one with experienced officers and achieved competitive excellence. I’m so proud of everyone, mentors and mentees alike.”
Winning gave participants a huge charge. “The feeling when I heard my name being called up on to the stage was amazing,” noted Ashna Chandra, grade 10, Harker DECA director of membership. “All the late nights and hard work were definitely worth it. Just thinking about being on stage and receiving the trophy gives me chills, it was such a surreal experience.”
Not all the successes were from beating competitors; some came from just participating. “I had a really good time at SVCDC this year,” said Shaan Gagneja, grade 10. “I was a finalist in both events that I competed in, and an overall finalist in my written event. I got to meet new people and expand my social network. This conference was an overall success for Harker DECA, and I can’t wait for the rest of the competitive season.”
DECA Out and About on Campuses
DECA is keeping busy back on campus, too. Starting early in the school year, the chapter sponsored an Idea Challenge on the middle school campus to bring DECA to middle schoolers. Middle school teams were assigned an item – in this case, a cardboard box – from which to create a product. Each team then had to promote the product via a video.
In late February, Glass and Logan Drazovich, grade 12, DECA vice president of public relations, went to the middle school campus to announce the winners of the Idea Challenge. Each team was judged on innovation, the value of their new idea, sustainability of the product and the effectiveness of their teamwork and communication.
Later in February, the DECA public relations team went to the middle school to meet with the members of the Stock Market Club. Drazovich led a discussion on the basics of the stock market, and gave the members valuable advice on how to play The Stock Market Game, an online simulation of the global capital markets. The middle school Stock Market Club members were enthusiastic and eager to learn new tips and tricks on how to further their “investments.”
DECA also connected with the upper school student body at an informal “lunch and learn” gathering hosted by Sanil Rajput, grade 12, DECA director of finance. Rajput talked about the basics of insurance: how it works, the different types of insurance, and why it’s essential. “I believe the lunch and learn went flawlessly,” said Rajput. “Students came in ready to learn and excited and asked many questions throughout. Overall, it was a great experience for everyone.”
The chapter also hosted a showing and discussion of Shark Tank, the popular reality show that encourages entrepreneurship. Alisa Su noted, “It was not only fun to watch the show in a classroom setting, but the discussion was insightful and invigorating. Who knew you could learn so much about business from a TV show!?”
Finally, DECA pitched top government officials in our area to promote programs like DECA. As part of its public policy- makers outreach, the group contacted Gov. Jerry Brown, U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo and San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. In emails to each, DECA addressed the importance of career technical education programs in high school, hoping to engage the leaders in a dialogue.
For the full list of winners and additional details for each conference, go to news. harker.org and search “DECA.”
This article originally appeared in the spring 2015 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s DECA program hit on all cylinders this winter, achieving new milestones!
First off, Harker DECA president Savi Joshi, grade 12 and advisor Juston Glass were named student of the year and advisor of the year, respectively. The winners were chosen by nomination and no chapter has ever had both a student and advisor named in the same year. Joshi was chosen from more than 5,000 student members in California, and Glass was chosen out of more than 100 advisors in California.
State DECA Conference In late February and early March, 98 students from Harker’s DECA chapter traveled to the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara to attend California’s State Career Development Conference. This four-day business conference and competition included workshops with renowned speakers, events with tough opponents and experiences for a lifetime.
“Our students did very well in competitions,” said junior Shannon Hong, Harker DECA director of communications and executive vice president of Silicon Valley DECA. The group took home three first-place awards, two third-place awards and 21 other top 10 awards.
Attending the state conference “was [not just] my final competition prior to the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) last April,” said Joshi, who took home a fourth-place award for her community service project. “It meant seeing my family in its element. That’s what DECA has become for me: a family. It’s the place and people I can go to when I need help, comfort or a challenge.
“ICDC is definitely a bittersweet event, as it signifies the end of a life-changing four year journey. I am DECA. We are Harker DECA. Welcome to our family,” added Joshi.
Along with competitions, students attended workshops, competed in role play and written events, had fun at Great America and sang karaoke. They also attended a formal dance, and the mini and grand awards ceremonies.
Advocacy Video Competition DECA’s “I am DECA” theme is the cornerstone of its 2014-15 marketing and membership campaign, and the video by Ankur Karwal, grade 11, and Alexis Gauba, grade 10, was named one of the top three in the DECA Advocacy Video Challenge. DECA challenged its members to produce a short video during Career and Technical Education Month that expressed their own stories and shared how career and technical education has impacted their high school experience so far.
More than 30 videos were submitted from high school and collegiate DECA members.
Finish Line Finalists Glenn Reddy, grade 12, and Logan Drazovich, grade 11, traveled to Indianapolis as one of three finalist teams nationwide competing in the DECA Finish Line Challenge. The teams advised Finish Line Inc. executives on how the company can best utilize and improve upon its omni-channel retailing strategy and company branding. Reddy and Drazovich submitted a video as part of the competition, and they received the winning accolades, coming in ahead of the other two finalist teams.
CareerConnect CareerConnect is Harker’s mentorship, career panel and professionalism program, featuring speakers from across a spectrum of professions. Recent CareerConnect guests have included Jag Kapoor, president of Golden State Restaurants Inc.; Cammie Dunaway, CEO of KidZania United States; Gigi Kelly, adjunct professor at the McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia; and Gary Gauba, president of Cognilytics-CenturyLink.
“CareerConnect’s panels were a great success in their second year,” said Shannon Hong. “Many students came out to hear from professionals in the fields of medicine, law, computer science, engineering and business. The panels provide a platform for students to learn from these professionals to gain an idea of a potential career path and build their network. We are now launching our second year of mentorship, a program that pairs students with professionals in their specific fields of interest so they can learn more about that specific niche and even shadow their mentors at their workplaces.”
Lead On More than 30 girls attended the Lead On Silicon Valley Conference for Women, along with more than 5,000 women from various industries, including technology, business, entrepreneurship and more. CareerConnect, part of Harker’s business and entrepreneurship program, sponsored the event with the help of Riverbed Technology Inc., which funded the entire Harker contingent to the event. Many, but not all, of the Harker attendees were from the B.E./DECA program.
Stock Market Game Harker DECA won its region with a final amount of $179,387.65. The next highest winner in the Western region scored $150,333.92; those were also the two highest scores nationwide. Team members Safia Khouja and David Lin, both seniors, are eligible to travel to Orlando, Fla., in April to participate in the Stock Market Game at the 2015 DECA International Career Development Conference. At that event, they will defend their investment decisions for a chance to be recognized at the ICDC Grand Awards Session.
The year isn’t over, but seniors are beginning to look back on their time with DECA with nostalgia and appreciation. “Of all my years of participating in Harker DECA, this year has certainly been the most enjoyable and rewarding,” said Jonathan Lee, grade 12, Harker DECA vice president of operations. “I felt that the spirit, camaraderie and mutual support reached an all-time high this year. Personally, I think DECA taught me what it means to be a leader. It means that I have to put my team and my chapter before myself whenever I make a decision. Of course this lesson of leadership, loyalty and commitment has extended into every aspect of my life.”
Harker DECA is an international competitive business organization that prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in four fields of business: marketing, finance, hospitality and management. The chapter integrates classroom instruction, applies learning, connects to business, and promotes competition so the next generation will be academically prepared, community oriented, professionally responsible and experienced leaders.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
The year started at a sprint and ended with a bang for DECA and the new business and entrepreneurship department (B.E.) – and all of the participants earned a well-deserved summer break. B.E. finished a historic first year with record sign-ups for the upcoming school year, while DECA finished with its best-ever International Career Development Conference (ICDC).
DECA is an international organization that prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in marketing, finance, hospitality and management. The DECA chapter’s trip to the ICDC in Atlanta yielded excellent results, with three top five finishes across various competitions and two more in the top 20, making it Harker’s best performance at the competition. Attendee Raymond Xu, grade 9, said, “DECA ICDC topped off this year as a showcase of our abilities, and we not only represented Harker but all of California as well.” Harker’s DECA chapter, which sent a record 24 students to the conference, plans to build on this momentum at future international DECA events.
The DECA chapter also is running an ongoing set of interactive simulations as part of its Team Business/Wharton School of Business program, intended to help students learn how businesses are actually run. Juston Glass, B.E. chair, said he has received “hands-on certification [to teach] students to not just learn theory but [the] actual practice” of how to run a business.
Students have responded very positively to the program. Adarsh Battu, grade 12, said, “Because of the way the simulation is structured, we are encouraged to analyze, innovate and ask questions that are important to running a business,” and that the simulation has “taught me a lot more than I initially expected.”
Meanwhile, the DECA chapter is engaged in a social media contest to pick the theme for a conference it will host in August. It will introduce newcomers to the various components of DECA while helping them develop good relationships with the officers whose DECA careers they hope to emulate.
The B.E. department also has kept busy. This year, it began overseeing Harker’s TEDx series; these talks aim to spread ideas and spark conversation on a variety of topics, such as technology and education.
This year, Harker’s TEDx talks surpassed all previous attendance and performance metrics, with speakers from prestigious companies including David Girouard, founder and CEO of Upstart, a rapidly growing lending company.
Meanwhile, the B.E. department’s Career Connect program worked to “connect students with their futures.” Extending an existing mentorship program, Career Connect pairs eager students with mentors and experts in the fields of medicine, business, law, computer science and engineering. Riya Chandra, grade 9, said, “The panels have been so inspiring to listen to and have even opened up my thoughts for considering other fields that I was not interested in before.” The program plans to continue pairing mentors and mentees in the coming school year.
In addition, B.E. oversees a podcast series, in which host Glenn Reddy, grade 11, interviews local business leaders about their experiences. Most recently, he interviewed Adam Draper, co-founder and CEO of Boost VC.
Sophia Luo, grade 10, who has managed the logistics of the B.E. podcast series as its director of operations, said, “I have been exposed to the life stories and experiences of successful business professionals of the Bay Area.” Luo and fellow students look forward to the continuation of the series.
The B.E. department has made great strides in its first year at Harker. Like runners after a marathon, the DECA chapter and B.E. programs have crossed the finish line and earned their recovery period. But their breather won’t last long as Glass is expecting increased interest from the student body and explosive program growth next year.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2010 Harker Quarterly.
According to the dictionary, an entrepreneur organizes, manages and assumes risk. That definition clearly highlights ways that extracurricular activities at Harker offer great opportunities for entrepreneurial thinking.
In a number of Harker organizations, students develop creative paths to achieve organizational goals, many of which add to the coffers of their club or charitable organizations, while others develop the spirit of entrepreneurship through acquisition and effective use of materials and research.
Entrepreneurship is clearly alive at the lower school where the lower school student council, advised by Kristin Giammona, elementary school head, gathers feedback and suggestions from its peers, then discusses solutions and ideas to address the concerns of the community. “It’s always [the students] saying, ‘Hey, we need to do something,’” Giammona said. “It’s always their idea. They definitely want to respond and help.”
In addition to improving things on campus, the lower school student council also supports the grade 4 toy drive and grade 5 food drive, bagging, loading and organizing the donated goods before shipment. Last year, the student council organized a bake sale to raise money for Haiti’s earthquake victims.
In the middle school, the eCYBERMISSION program, led by science teacher Vandana Kadam, requires teams to use math, science and technology to present a solution to a community issue. One of last year’s teams, The Dust Busters, spent all year researching a community controversy two students initially read about in the town newspaper related to mercury dust emissions from Lehigh Hanson Cement Plant.
Before submitting their project online in February, the quartet spent five months collecting samples from four different bodies of water, testing for emissions in the lab and compiling data to research ways to educate the residents about the pollution and possible health issues. They also interviewed company officials to hear their side of the story.
The Dust Busters discovered that, while the plant was not in violation of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations, the mercury level in water near the quarry was significantly higher than mercury levels in other bodies of water in the area. The students took their findings to the Cupertino City Council and created a pamphlet that was distributed door to door to residents.
The entrepreneurial aspects of eCYBERMISSION projects stand out. A good project “needs students who have good research skills, writing skills, data collection and analysis, and public relations skills to help them interview experts in the field that they are working on,” said Kadam.
Peace-2-Peace is one of many service- oriented groups on the middle school campus using entrepreneurship to advance its goals. Two years ago members organized a garage sale to raise money for an orphanage in India. Last year they sold Halloween “candy-grams” to start an account with Kiva, an organization which provides microloans to people in underdeveloped regions so they can start businesses.
The single most obvious entrepreneurial effort takes place in the hardware-filled robotics laboratory. “I model my program after a Silicon Valley start-up,” said Eric Nelson, physics teacher and robotics advisor. “Each year the team receives ‘seed funding’ through the school via the advancement office. The team learns early on that they must live within their funding limits, so all members are made aware of the need to plan and report.”
Elected officers appoint the corporate equivalent of vice presidents to oversee every aspect of the team, including team image (promotion, logos, recruiting, spirit, etc.), business development (business plan and sponsorships) and finance (purchasing, vendor relationships and budget planning).
In an example of spontaneous entrepreneurship, for this year’s Harker Family & Alumni Picnic, robotics students designed and built a laser gun game that allowed picnic goers to fire lasers instead of water to fill and pop balloons. The idea was a product of a brainstorming session, “and the details evolved as they tried to get the various parts to work,” Nelson said.
“In preparation for start of the robotics competition season which runs from January to April, the students must build up strategic partnerships with other teams, suppliers and machine shops in order to ensure we have access to the resources we are likely to need,” he added.
The efforts at all three schools embrace most, if not all, the elements of entrepreneurship, including risk: like adult entrepreneurs, students risk failure and risk spending their limited time on projects outside of required classroom work. The payoffs are there, however, in personal growth, whether failing or succeeding, and in some contests, like eCYBERMISSION, substantial cash prizes: Harker’s two regional winning teams, seven students in all, earned $18,000 in prize money last year, and one team traveled to Baltimore to present to the U.S Army organizers, an invaluable experience.
Of course, at Harker, the focus is on the lessons learned, not on results above all. In the robotics program, students learn a great deal more than just how to run a robot. They learn something about how to build and run an engineering company, said Nelson. “There are years where we ‘go public’ and are off to the championships, and then there are years where we go Chapter 11. In both cases the students learn volumes about not only engineering but also team work, leadership and organization,” he noted.