LaunchX Teen Entrepreneurs Speak on Air: Innovation Showcase

NewTV interview with founder Laurie Stach and young entrepreneurs from our summer programHost of Innovation Showcase, Jay Sugarman, invited LaunchX, its founder Laurie Stach, and several of its high school entrepreneurs to join his TV show to share their innovations. His show aims to inform viewers about exciting innovations. Laurie joined the show previously to tell a bit about the Launch program and its many offerings, and in this second time of joining the show, brought several students of the summer program to highlight their amazing achievements.In just the short four weeks of the program, students start real companies. The show was timed such that students were most of the way through the summer program. The four high school entrepreneurs shared a bit about their backgrounds as well as their companies:

• Jessica Telizyn is from Canada and is a speed skater. She has always been interested in starting something real. Jessica and her team have founded Ursa, a device that increases crop yield for farmers by capturing CO2 emissions off the back of tractors and allowing these emissions to be released into greenhouses to improve crop yields.
• Neil Deshmukh is from Pennsylvania, enjoys biking, and loves technology. He has developed some devices such as one that tracks earthquakes, wanting to help people through technology, and so was drawn to Launch to be able to further help others through technology. Neil and his co-founders have started a company that allows visually impaired people to be able to better detect nuanced differences between items that are typically challenging for them to differentiate, such as printed text, colors, and more. Neil provides a demo of the application of their company during the video, and some of their plans for the further development including a hardware device.
• Richa Krishna wanted to come together with others at Launch who shared a common passion to make an impact. Richa and Arya are co-founders of Pulse Wearables with two other teammates. Their company addresses the challenge of the prevalance of heart conditions, and how limiting this can be for people with these conditions. Their product is a monitor that allows real-time monitoring with a small, comfortable wearable.
• Arya Goutam is from the bay area and has been interested in robotics and programming since a young age. He wanted to learn how to bring these things to market.

Laurie shares within the video a bit about what it takes to become a part of the Launch program. The application review focuses much more on the video and activities than on other components, where the admissions committee loves to see candidates who have taken initiative and pushed themselves outside of just standard extracurriculars.She also shares some about the teaming process during the program, which includes a bit of input from individuals, while leveraging Launch's experience with team dynamics of skills and personalities to guide final team decisions.Throughout the summer, students receive support through classes that guide them through the entrepreneurial process, guest speakers specialized in business topics, plus advice from their mock board of directors--their team of mentors with whom they meet each week to review their decisions and next steps. The network of 20 startups in the cohort are also instrumental in providing support to help one another throughout the process as they share resources, learn from one another, and provide each other moral support through the inevitable ups and downs of the entrepreneurial process.