An MIT Alumni Association Publication

Helping H.S. Students Start Real Businesses

  • Martin Trust Center Staff
  • slice.mit.edu
  • 2

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SafeStart, a sobriety testing system that uses infrared sensors to check blood alcohol levels, helps prevent drunk drivers from getting on the road. Bulkr, an online platform, allows customers to buy high-quality organic food in bulk directly from local farms with little to no markup. Dropwise, which provides tools to monitor water usage, helps customers save thousands of gallons of water per year and hundreds of dollars on their annual bills.

These are just a few of the companies created by high school students—yes, high school students—through MIT Launch, which offers two month-long summer entrepreneurship programs that became part of the MIT entrepreneurial ecosystem two years ago.

“Our goal is to cultivate the next generation of entrepreneurs by giving high school students both robust entrepreneurship training and a real opportunity to try their hands at starting a business,” says Laurie Stach '06, the founder and director of MIT Launch.

A confluence of factors—the pace of technological change, the ever-lowering barriers to entry of starting a company, and the natural curiosity and boundary-pushing mindset inherent to teenagers—mean that today’s high school students have the potential to create world-changing businesses, according to Stach. “Based on the successful companies that our program has already helped launch, it’s clear that teenagers represent an underutilized resource in the entrepreneurial workforce.”

The program, which runs two sessions during the summer months, is housed within the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. Over the course of four weeks, students form teams and develop their business ideas. The teams must determine the right customer base and strategy, prototype a beta version of their offerings, and create a comprehensive business plan that includes how they will make money and how the company will scale.

Over half the companies created at MIT Launch continue to grow one year after the program ends. These include these examples: Purchasemate, an app that allows smartphone users to scan a product’s barcode to see details of the corporation that produces it—including the company’s donations to political organizations and its UN Human Rights rating; The Bridge Initiative, a nonprofit that links people with disabilities to long-term employment opportunities; and Bites, a marketplace for chefs to sell gourmet meals to local college students.

MIT Launch alumni have achieved other milestones too. Owen Xu, co-founder of MicroH20, which designs water purification systems, recently saw his company hit the 1M RMB revenue mark in China. Meanwhile, Mihir Trivedi last year won second place at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon, and Michael Matias, now 18, recently delivered a TEDx Talk on the value of being a teen entrepreneur and the effect of experimental learning on teenagers.

Read the full article and learn more about MIT Launch's summer program, clubs, and online program.

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Comments

Rck

Mon, 08/29/2016 1:42am

Hi, I am a teacher here in China and I am hoping to make some contacts with Alumni and staff at MIT to talk to and advise me on how to help my students apply to MIT and succeed !

I look forward to hearing from you .

geet

Tue, 09/19/2017 7:47am

Bulkr is really good. i will surely look forward to buy some organic food from them.