Teenagers aren’t exactly known for their discipline and focus. But Mary Winn Miller, IE 07, sees in high school students the potential to be successful leaders and create their own companies, despite their young age.
In fact, Miller wishes someone would have taught her about entrepreneurship when she was a teen. That’s why she and her husband Martin created Endevvr, a five-week summer program designed to foster business building and leadership skills through hands-on experiences with working professionals.
“When we first started Endevvr, I always knew there was untapped potential in high school students,” Miller says. “I know because I felt that way when I was in high school. I knew I had the intellectual capacity to learn entrepreneurial skills much earlier and I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I had.”
It turns out Miller’s intuition was right: Over the past two years, the teenage graduates of Endevvr have created unique startup businesses that are alive and well.
Take for example Sam Lurye. At just 16 years old, he’s received $100,000 in venture capital funding for a mobile app called Kiss that he created during the Endevvr program.
Kiss is akin to passing notes in high school, only it’s on your phone. Instead of wringing your hands and wondering if your crush likes you back, the Kiss app allows you to anonymously find out. “Sam even negotiated with his principal to have certain hours off so he could talk with his investors,” Miller says.
If you’re beginning to feel like an underachiever, don’t worry. Miller says recent advances in technology have made all the difference in making startups much more realistic for enterprising teens.
“Starting a company is so much easier and cheaper than it was even 10 years ago,” Miller says. “The barriers to entry have gone down, which has made this a ripe opportunity for high school students.”
Miller and her husband launched Endevvr’s pilot program in Boston in 2013. Last year, Endevvr’s first official five-week program was held at Georgia Tech, bringing some of the nation’s brightest high school students to campus. This summer, Endevvr will take place in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania.
It’s no accident that over Endevvr’s young life span, the program has been held in three different cities. Miller explains that Endevvr isn’t just about learning what it takes to create a business. It’s also about exposing the participants to startup communities in new cities each year, as well as introducing those communities to a new class of young and energetic entrepreneurs.
“We really believe in trying to bring this experience to a lot of different communities,” Miller says. “It’s not about leveraging existing infrastructure but going to places where that community is growing.”
So how do teens learn the essentials of business and create a successful company over the course of five weeks?
Miller says it’s a dynamic process and depends a lot on the chemistry of the participants. There are certain things they set out to teach the students, such as a basic business vocabulary, how to put together an income statement and how to project what a company is worth. But Miller says they mostly try to let the students learn by doing.
“It really is very organic and evolves as the program moves on,” Miller says.
Some students come to Endevvr with very developed ideas they hope to turn into businesses. Others come in with nothing particular in mind other than to learn. And that mix is important, Miller says.
One year, she encouraged a team of three students without a solid plan to brainstorm what they have in common—without worrying if it had anything to do with business. It turned out that all three teens had a relative on the autism spectrum. This common bond ultimately sparked their business idea: a company that provides travel experiences geared specifically toward people with autism and their families.
Miller says she always asks her Endevvr students to identify the problem that they’re trying to solve—a lesson she credits as one of the biggest takeaways from her education at Tech. “There’s a problem-solving mentality that’s absolutely instilled in Georgia Tech students and was definitely instilled in me,” Miller says. “It’s something I try to instill in my students at Endevvr, too. So there’s a ripple effect there.”
Miller doesn’t just talk the talk. Asking herself that same question led to the development of Endevvr.
“For me it was never ‘Gosh, I want to be an entrepreneur.’ It was, ‘What is the problem I’m trying to solve and what’s the best way to solve it?’”
Though she has been working as a business consultant while dreaming up and implementing Endevvr these past few years, the program’s startup curricula finally rubbed off on her. She recently joined a startup company called Vega Factor that uses everything from the chaos theory of mathematics to the latest psychological research to study what creates a successful business culture. Still, just as she has for the past two years, Miller is looking forward to spending this summer helping teach teens how to become entrepreneurs.
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