By Ritu Jha-
With the theme ‘ignite, innovate and elevate,’ over 250 high school aspiring entrepreneurs participated in the first TiE Young Entrepreneur (TYE) Globals 2024 conference and global competition, held June 19 through 21 in the San Francisco Bay Area.
TiE Young Entrepreneur (TYE) is one of the programs of TiE Silicon Valley aimed at fostering the future generation of entrepreneurs. TYE Globals is an annual flagship event for the Youth Entrepreneurship Division of TiE Silicon Valley. The program runs a 10-week bootcamp and teaches high school students skills in business and start-up concepts.
Reena said the idea was to create and develop the entrepreneurial mindset of every student, and not just the ones who are winners. She hoped the conference would help participants build relationships and land jobs in the real world.
“In this event, we brought in industry experts to talk to the students, to let them know what’s going on in the industry,” she added.
TiE Young Entrepreneurs (TYE) is dedicated to fostering the next generation of entrepreneurs by creating a program for high school students to experience entrepreneurship and innovation through experiential education. With TYE, students can start on the entrepreneurship pathway to their professional careers.
In 2024, TYE has hosted 14 sessions, and a welcome session. The welcome session was followed by an HR industry analyst who spoke about what Gen Z and companies are looking for in its workforce, and how do the two meet in the middle. “We also had three tracks with four sessions in each, that discussed various subjects like AI, NFTs, blockchain, culinary and healthcare. All the sessions were aligned with career opportunities and technical education pathways in schools. We ended with a Q and A and a fireside chat with the CIO of Nextdoor,” Gupta told indica.
All the sessions were geared towards educating the high schoolers. The experts focused on trends, opportunities, and problems of the industry.
Vijay Menon, executive director of TYE Global[Above left holding a microphone], told indica, “This is the first TYE global conference being held in Silicon Valley. It’s being concurrently held in Hyderabad, India, for the Indian chapters. We now have 28 chapters in India, 19 in the US, and three in Canada. In India, 12 chapters are participating, while in Silicon Valley, 12 chapters from across the US are present, including Seattle, Dallas, Boston, Atlanta, Oregon, LA, and San Diego.”
Menon expressed hope that many participants from the event will become entrepreneurs later, stating that seeds of entrepreneurship were sown during the program. “The other big benefit that the students who go through this program get is they become more confident, they’re able to present their ideas better, and are able to articulate their thoughts better. Those are all added advantages of the program,” Menon said.
He added that the number of participants has increased globally, from 1,500 to 5,000, owing to heightened student interests.
Menon feels that India’s inclination towards entrepreneurship has increased as its mindset has changed. “Earlier, a majority of parents in India considered entrepreneurship ventures a risk and advised children to opt for jobs. During the last 15 years, that has changed because prosperity has come in India, and the middle class is willing to take a chance. Today, kids have the luxury to try it out and there’s capital available. People are willing to look at problems and try to solve them,” he said.
The June 19 day-long conference was held at Las Positas College in Livermore, where corporate leaders, executives, authors, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists shared about their journey and offered wisdom to youths who traveled from across the U.S.
Padmaja Dasari, CIO of Nextdoor[Above left], told indica: “Nextdoor is about connecting communities. The participants of TYE are high schoolers, and my topic was on youth’s roles and communities.”
On joining Nextdoor, she said, “Communities resonate well with me, especially the power of communities and that’s why I joined Nextdoor. We also partnered with a nonprofit organization called Code Tender Line and donated laptops. We also do a lot of mentorships, to help them find jobs.”
Alder Riley, co-founder & CEO, Itemfarm, and a founding member of Small Steps & Giant Leaps, a network of more than 90,000 professionals in the space industry, said: “My community is about 100,000 members. Lots of people are looking for future employees or looking to take on internships, et cetera. And one of the things that they are always looking for is people that come from a broad base of expertise. If we’re thinking about space and space exploration, we’ll need expertise in different backgrounds. I showed the kids at TYE that there is potential for whatever they’re interested in. There is a company or an organization that is helping humanity expand into the cosmos that is perfect for them.”
Mino Sastry[Above photo], Interim Chief Administrative Officer & Vice President of Service Lines and Market Development at Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley, spoke on healthcare. He provided a high-level overview to orient the participants on different sectors of healthcare industry. “There are major challenges in healthcare that we’re all trying to solve and that the younger generation are going to have to deal with. We always hear about the cost of health care, but yet the cost of health care is decided on one end, while we still have to deliver high-quality care. So how do you balance those two? So, that’s one problem we tried to solve as a group at TYE,” Sastry said.
Chris Carter[Above photo], Executive Director at Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center, spoke about art at TYE.
Saurabh Palan, Co-founder, Neopolis, who holds over 10 patents in AI, robotics, and autonomous driving, talked to youths about the future of autonomous vehicles.
During the conference, indica also spoke to a few winners, parents, and coaches who traveled from different U.S. states. The pitch competition was held June 20 and 21 at UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Campus in Santa Clara, California.
Soundwave, a Seattle-based company won the TYE Globals 2024 award. Soundwave does accent moderation for call centers and its proprietary AI model can moderate an accent so that customers can better understand them.
Overjoyed about winning the award they told indica, “The concept it[TYE] offers is great and the execution is even better,” Pradyu Kandala, co-founder of Soundwave, said. “It’s happy to scale and lots of VCs showed interest.”
Speaking about Soundwave’s win, Kanika Arora, outreach director for TiE Seattle, told indica, “This is a culmination of a lot of hard work. They have been working for many months on the presentation, and pitch.”
Trisha Kumar, who won the best business model award, came with her mother to attend the competition from Dallas. She told indica that her company PLANIT, a one-stop event planning for teenagers, uses AI tools for a personalized event planning process.
North Carolina-based SoberRide, a device that prevents drunk driving by using facial recognition and AI-powered sensors, won the 2nd runner-up, the best elevator pitch, and the best business model award.
Swayam Shah, the CEO of SoberRide told indica, “Our product was inspired by one of mine and Krithin Visvesh’s neighbors, Jonathan Pooley, who passed away due to drunk driving.”
