The Starting Gate

NFTE teens' presentations wow the judges -- and the winners are...

The winner of last night's Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) South Florida Youth Bizplan Challenge already has three years' experience running her business -- and she is only 15.

Giselle Gallardo, a freshman at John A. Ferguson Senior High (pictured here with NFTE's director and judges), who won 1st Place for her company called Crazy 4 Bows Bowtique, recognized that jumping into the hot fashion teen trend of bows was not enough. She needed a product differentiator, and so bottle caps are incorporated into her school-spirited designs. She gave a strong presentation to the judges, but she had a lot of competition.

The 23 winning teams at each of the school competitions first competed in a semifinalist competition in the afternoon. Soon after, five finalists were selected to pitch in the finals. Each team gave an 8.5 minute pitch and fielded tough questions in front of a panel of judges and an auditorium full of people at the University of Miami.

Coming in second place in NFTE's annual regional competition was Jennifer Carter (pictured here presenting her company) of American Senior High. Her company, Precious Pearls, offers custom bras. "Precious Pearls isn't just a bra line, it sells confidence too," she says.

Both winners will be going to New York City to compete in the global NFTE competition in October.

The other finalists were: Eligansi, by Alissa Ovalle-Marquez of Hallandale Senior High, taking third place; iStylez Fashion, by Samandie Douceur of Miami Edison Senior High; and Histrionic Film Enterprises, by Richard Guzman and Yarien Suarez of Hialeah Gardens Senior High.

All five finalists won seed money for their businesses ($250 up to $1,500 for the first place winner). Hector Tundidor Jr., managing partner of Ernst & Young's Miami office and one of the judges, said all the presentations were very strong and the judges had their work cut out for them.  

The keynote address was given by Nicklas Sarnicola of The Sarnicola Foundation, which also was the presenting sponsor for the contest. After telling his entrepreneurial story, he advised NFTE students to "build a business around your passion, not just to make money." He also said entrepreneurship isn't for everyone and it is not easy -- entrepreneurs need to get used to failure. But when you are truly passionate about your business, it doesn't feel like work at all, he said.

NFTE South Florida offers entrepreneurship programs in low-income schools in Miami-Dade and Broward. The nonprofit launched in South Florida seven years ago serving 350 students -- now it serves more than 3,000 students, said Executive Director Alice Horn. "We are nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurs."

 

Hallandale student a Global Young Entrepreneur of the Year

This week, Hallandale High student Evania Joseph will be celebrated as one of The Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship’s  Global Young Entrepreneurs of the Year at NFTE’s Silver Anniversary Gala in New York City, presented by Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses. At the Tuesday evening gala, Evania will also showcase her company One Knot and pitch her products with young entrepreneurs from all over the world in front of business, philanthropic and community leaders.

After conducting an informal survey of her peers, Evania concluded that young people would donate to worthy causes if there were a way to do it that was both affordable and fashionable. “As a junior in high school, I noticed the huge lack of awareness of social causes such as going green, the battle against breast cancer, the efforts to stop child abuse, and the ways we can support our troops,” says Evania.

Her company One Knot spreads awareness of social causes by donating one dollar of every handmade, knotted bracelet sold to one of several charitable organizations. “One Knot is geared to shine the light on the importance of awareness in itself. Each box has a fact about the social cause that the bracelet in it is themed after. It also suggests other ways to get involved with the organization that supports the cause.” Evania plans to study international business in college, and she hopes one day to serve on the board of the United Nations. Of NFTE, she says, “You will discover the person you’re meant to be through this course. Whether it’s an entrepreneur or not, you will find yourself.”

“She is a remarkable young lady who has overcome significant obstacles to develop a socially conscious business,” said Alice Horn, executive director of NFTE South Florida. “Her story resonates particularly in view of the global youth unemployment crisis – she, like many other NFTE students, has made her own job and her own way in life.”

In Florida, 18.2% of youth aged 20-24 are unemployed, and a staggering 31.4% of youth 16-24 are unemployed, said Horn. NFTE, which offers entrepreneurship programs in dozens of schools in South Florida’s low-income areas, empowers young people not only to start businesses and create jobs, but also to be opportunity-focused, flexible employees ready to fill existing jobs. 

Gulliver Prep team a global winner in Spirit of Innovation Challenge

A team from Gulliver Preparatory School was one of tour teams of high school students receiving top honors at the 2013 Innovation Summit, the final round of competition for the 2012-2013 Spirit of Innovation Challenge. Their efforts to create a product or service to benefit humanity earned winning teams a total of more than $50,000 in cash prizes and awards.

This year, 20 finalist teams were selected from a pool of more than 230 entries from 44 countries to travel to Houston and and pitch their ideas “Lean Startup” style before industry experts, leading entrepreneurs, government officials and world-renowned scientists. The judges critiqued each team’s product based on commercial viability, scientific soundness and its potential to support global sustainability.

Team Eco-Cooker from Gulliver  developed a clean, self-sustaining methane production system which stores bio-waste to produce a combustible gas that works as a low-cost energy and heating source. The product is intended for use in developing countries.

For a full listing of finalist products, visit http://bit.ly/136PY4c.

 

Business Plan Challenge announces High School Track finalists

By the looks of the entries in the Business Plan Challenge High School Track, South Florida’s future economy is in very good hands.

Entries poured in from all three counties with ideas for mobile apps, education products, new restaurants, food creations and lots of fashions. Some of the students provided well-researched ideas, while others already have operating companies. Nearly all the entries had socially entrepreneurial twists.

We had 59 entries in all in the High School Track, which is co-sponsored by the nonprofit Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE South Florida), which provides entrepreneurship education programs in low-income schools. The judges admired the students’ creativity and passion for their concepts, which often catered to the teen market, but to stand out from the pack, the students needed to present a clear strategy for execution as well as an innovative idea in their business plans.      

If there were an award for a school, though, it would have to go to Ransom Everglades, whose students accounted for almost half of the entries for a second year in a row and placed well in the finals. Students in teacher Jennifer Nero’s macroeconomics class alone submitted about 20 of the entries.

The top three winners will be profiled in the May 6 edition of Business Monday. The 2013 finalists are:

•  Do-Re-Mi A-B-C 1-2-3 Piano Book, by Veronica Chua and Hee-Young Kim of Ransom Everglades. This beginner level piano book, envisioned by students who have played instruments for years, uses creative musical instruction and story-based songs to help young children develop a strong foundation in math and reading, revolutionizing the traditional piano lesson book.

•  How Do I Look? by Kyle Lieberbaum, Blake Altman, Josh Kaplan and Jonathan Greenwald, of Miami Beach Senior High and Ransom Everglades. This app would provide a community for users to receive advice and critique outfits, and puts personal shopping in everyone’s pocket, resulting in a better looking and more self-confident world. The app would include a ratings system and opportunities for coupons.

•  iServe, by Jan Bergengruen and Jordi Lorido of Ransom Everglades. This app targeted at high school students would provide ways to help the community by informing students of nearby local opportunities where they could help out, as well as simplify the process of tracking and credibly confirming volunteer hours.

•  Life on the Line, by Juan Felipe Barragan and Isabella Zopo of St. Thomas Aquinas. This interactive RPG (role-playing game) app aims to help middle school and high school students understand the issues of violence, raising awareness in order to solve the problems and misuses of the weapons, while immersing players in the professions of the people who protect our community, such as police officers and firefighters.

•  SeniorLink Consulting, by Sam Steiner of St. Andrew’s School. This already operating company provides senior citizens with in-home computer installation and services as well as tutoring by high school students for a reasonable hourly fee. The Palm Beach County-based company has hired its first employees and plans more hires to expand its territory to other parts of South Florida.

•  Spider, by Jared Ertel and Ryan Schatz, of Ransom Everglades. The goal of this free website would be to organize all social media into one concise, neat format, organized based on the user’s interests. Revenue would be derived from advertising; 35 percent of profits would go to charitable organizations that are most actively supported on the site by the user base.   

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/14/3342263/business-plan-challenge-announces.html#storylink=cpy

Miami's Got Tech showcases student talent

An annual event put on by the Technology Committee of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce event called Miami's Got Tech showcased emerging tech talent at Florida International University and Miami Dade College on Thursday. John Walsh, CTO of CareCloud, gave the keynote address, and among other things talked about the hiring the Miami-based fast-growing healthcare tech company, already with about 170 employees, will be doing. Of about 20 new positions Carecloud plans to fill soon, more than half are in engineering and software development, said Ralph MacNamara, chair of the GMCC Technology Committee and director of client services for Kaufman, Rossin & Co., before the event.

The six student teams not only networked and exhibited their apps, games and websites but participated in a contest, where the prize was $500 from FIU's Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center. Frank Hernandez was the winner, and Karl Morris, Daniela Cadena and Salvi Pascual were named runners-up. The judges were Jorge Rey and  MacNamara with Kaufman, Rossin & Co. and Andrew Stevens and Joe Yeung with CareCloud.

The students and their projects were:
Karl Morris -- Stock Trader Challenge
Frank Hernandez -- MTG Doctor
Lazaro Herrera -- Planet Defenders
Daniela Cadena -- Soshial
Thelson Richardson -- Direct Dialect
Salvi Pascual -- Rebate Ninja

 

Boca teen launches his site for social entrepreneurs into beta

Jared Kleinert, a junior at Spanish River High School in Boca, reports that he just launched Synergist into private beta this week. Synergist (www.synergi.st) is a crowdsourcing site and online community for social entrepreneurs.

Anyone can sign up for the beta, with which they can meet other social entrepreneurs, collaborate in a free online workspace, and share their projects to gain support directly from the community. They can also back other projects and receive rewards for helping others to start their social movements, Jared says.

“We would love to get people from the Miami tech community onto Synergist,” says Jared, 17. “Right now we do have customers and the platform is already trying to tackle societal issues in women's empowerment, charity giving through music, and health education with our first three posted projects.”

Synergist will probably go into public beta in two or three months, he adds.  

Jared recently returned from UnCollege’s Hackademic Camp in San Francisco and The Intersection Event for social entrepreneurs at Google in Silicon Valley.

Read an earlier Starting Gate post about Jared and his entrepreneurial passions here.

 

GMCC Economic Summit offers broader stage for critical tech, education issues

While parts of the agenda of the Greater Miami Chamber's South Florida Economic Summit could be expected -- sessions and speakers on real estate and financial services, for instance -- others such as on education, entrepreneurship and technology came as a welcome surprise, noted Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez in remarks concluding the third annual summit on Monday.

That these topics were discussed at an economic forum attracting 600+ movers and shakers is signficant.  Topics brought up during these sessions -- closing the socio-economic and gender gaps when it comes to tech, combatting the region's brain drain and accelerating high-growth companies -- are familiar terrain to the tech and startup communities and likely to be debated again at next week's Start-Up City: Miami event. But these topics weren't to be found on last year's Chamber summit agenda. (It should be noted the Chamber does have active tech and education committees and the issues are included in its One Community One Goal initiative.)

In the education/entrepreneurship session, panelists noted the world is changing, old models of education aren't supported any longer, that schools need to teach entrepreneurship and business needs to be a strong education partner. Still, Dr. Eduardo Padron of Miami Dade College noted that the room should have been packed with business people; instead only about a third in the audience identified themselves as business people. Unfortunately, fixing education is not a priority with most, he said. Miami-Dade County Schools Superintendant Alberto Carvalho gave some sobering statistics about the digital divide in our community -- only 30 percent have Internet access in the country's fourth largest school district, for instance -- although there has been improvement and the business community has stepped up with funding, he noted. "The only way to level the playing field is through technology-- guaranteed universal connectivity, smart curriculums and smart connections," he said. Susan Amat, founder of the new Launch Pad Tech accelerator in downtown Miami, issued a call to action to the business community to give their time to mentoring high-growth startups so the new companies will continue to call Miami home and grow the jobs of  the future. “We want people to say ‘no business community is going to do what Miami did for me’ ” Amat said.

The technology panel covered some of the same ground. In disucssions about what it would take to build a world class tech ecosystem in Miami, Manny Medina of Medina Capital Partners said the four pillars of success are education, accelerators and incubators, funding and an employment base and South Florida has a fantastic opportunity to be a strong player in tech. Juan Diego Calle, founder and CEO of .CO Internet, said the community needs to come together and get to know one another, should attack its brain drain problem, and needs a few startups to become stars to inspire others. Calle, along with fellow panelists such as Andrew Carricarte, founder and CEO of IOS Health Systems, a national health information technology provider, could build their businesses anywhere but choose South Florida. Yet, nearly all said finding enough local tech talent is a challenge. Adam Burden of Accenture said the area needs specialists in big data and cloud archtecture programming and it's expensive for companies to have to import from New York or Silicon Valley. "We aren't producing enough organically grown talent."  Will Fleming, who is co-founder and CEO of MotionPoint, a global website translation service that is doubling the size of its Coconut Creek headquarters and adding 100-150 employees in the next couple of years, agreed and said we need to think regionally, drawing on all the strengths of the tri-county area, to develop a tech hub. Added Medina, who founded Terremark and is bringing a major tech conference to Miami in May of 2014: "People ask how do we compete [with other tech hubs]? My hope is that we don't compete, we complement."

For his part, Mayor Gimenez said he is putting his money where his mouth is and investing in education and tech, noting the county's $1 million investment in the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator. He  lauded the Knight Foundation's recent investments, including its $2 million investment to bring the global entrepreneurship nonprofit Endeavor to Miami to support high-impact entrepreneurs. Will education, entrepreneurship and tech be advanced by work through the Chamber's One Community One Goal? Clearly there is still work to be done, but  at least it's clearly on the agenda.

Related story on the housing recovery being the talk of the summit: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/04/3217385/economy-on-the-rebound-but-for.html

 

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News: Targeting gender gap in tech, Girls Who Code expanding to Miami

Girls Who Code, a national nonprofit working to close the gender gap in technology and engineering, will expand to Miami, Detroit and San Jose. The national expansion is being funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

According to the press release this morning, Girls Who Code, which launched in 2012, offers a new model for computer science education, pairing 300 hours of intensive instruction in robotics, web design and mobile development with mentorship from and exposure to the industry’s top female engineers and entrepreneurs. In its first venture outside of New York, Girls Who Code’s eight-week intensive summer programs will launch for 13- to 17-year-old girls this summer in Detroit and San Jose, in the offices of GE and eBay, respectively.

Miami’s program will launch next year.

“Technology has the power to transform communities,” said Girls Who Code Founder Reshma Saujani in the press release. “With Knight’s support, we are training a community of consumers to become a community of producers, creators and innovators. We can’t wait to meet the young women of Detroit, San Jose and Miami.”

Knight Foundation’s $435,000 investment is part of its Tech for Engagement Initiative, which aims to use the power of technology to bring people together to shape their future.

The need is huge: With 1.5 million computing jobs to fill by 2020, the U.S. is only expected to produce enough qualified candidates to fill 29 percent of those jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Today, just 14 percent of computer science degrees are awarded to women, compared to 37 percent in 1984, the U.S. Department of Commerce has found.

Here is a   link to the Knight Foundation blog for a post from Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani  on why Girls Who Code is needed.

College Hunks franchise drives founder's vision back to Miami

After spending a semester studying the company College Hunks Hauling Junk in an Entrepreneurship Consulting Class at the University of Miami, two UM alumni made the jump and opened their own College Hunks Hauling Junk franchise at 31 SE 5^th St. in Miami. Christopher Poore and Ron Rick, shown in photo above, graduated from UM in 2012 with degrees in Entrepreneurship.

In a way, it's coming full circle. In 2003, founder and CEO Omar Soliman, while a senior at UM, won first place and $10,000 in the university's business plan competition for College Hunks Hauling Junk.  He went on to found CollegeHunks Hauling Junk with long-time friend Nick Friedman and a cargo van he borrowed from his mother. The award-winning company is based in Tampa, and today there are franchises around the country. The new Miami location is the 46^th franchise in the network and the fifth location in Florida. “Miami will always hold a special place in our heart,” said Soliman. 

Read Alexandra Leon's story about South Florida college students, including Poore and Rick, who have started businesses during or immediately after college.

Photo courtesy of SteveBoxall.com 

 

Young entrepreneur already making a difference

Jared Kleinert, a South Florida entrepreneur I met recently at Lean Startup Machine Miami (he was on the winning team, pictured at right), plans to soon (early 2013) launch Synergist, a platform that will allow social entrepreneurs to meet potential co-founders online, collaborate and crowdfund their new projects. "The goal is to spark innovation and provide brilliant minds with everything they need to create magic: exceptional co-founders and partners, a place to build and store their work, and a way to get funding," he says. Jared just launched AliveNDead, a blog about risk-taking and uncertainty in entrepreneurship. He also interns for a San Francisco startup called 15Five, helping companies improve the way they communicate internally. In early 2013, he plans to participate in  The Intersection Event at Google's headquarters and the Uncollege Hackademic Camp, both in Silicon Valley.

His current passion is social entrepreneurship, and he says he wants to change the world. He has some time to rock that lofty goal. Jared is a 17-year-old  junior at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton.

IdeaMensch did a wide-ranging Q&A with him today. Read it here.