The K-Startup

The K-Startup platform provides high schools with entertaining and highly practical entrepreneurship tools to increase students' educational engagement, spark interest in modern entrepreneurship, and provide an economic boost to communities.

The K-Startup helps high school students to learn modern business practices and skills by providing high schools with courses that mimic processes, structure, and culture of a real startup experience.

The first course is “The K-Startup Essentials”:

• Nine-weeks program that mimics startup experience. The program can be used as a part of a Business Class curriculum in 10-11th grade.
• Students from different schools are combined in groups of five people. Each person in the group is responsible for their own area (Management, Development, Marketing, Accounting, Sales);
• Each group works online through main startup stages (brainstorming, value proposition generation and validation, strategizing, development, testing, analyzing, iterating, marketing, selling, etc.);
• At the end of the course each group presents the project online;
• Judges review projects and award internships, prizes, investments.

By connecting students from different locations and providing latest and most practical entrepreneurial frameworks K-Startup can serve all types of communities including the underserved regions, which is our target population.

Our target populations are Black and Hispanic communities, since these two ethnic groups have amongst the lowest business ownership levels (5.6% and 13%, respectively) [1]. Also, unfortunately, students from Black and Hispanic school districts are the most likely to drop out of high school [2]. Our hope is to serve these ethnic groups by offering highly engaging and practical modern entrepreneurship tools and frameworks to empower them to start their own businesses. These students have the right to learn modern efficient ways of creating a business and have an impact. Moreover, as a result of the pandemic, we have seen a historic high number of business being created, and it is crucial that we equip our young generation with the right tools to keep up with the rate of change in our modern world [3].

K-Startup in partnerships with local schools and educational cooperatives, will provide students with entertaining and highly practical business courses that would teach students how to start a business, collaborate, and leverage modern technology to bring their ideas to market. We will also provide visibility for our cohorts to potential investors and employers.

Resources:

1. https://www.zippia.com/business-owner-jobs/demographics/

2.https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rdc.asp

3.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/business/startup-business-creation-pandemic.html

As I mentioned earlier, we have launched the first iteration of our program at Centerpoint High School in Southern Arkansas; this first pilot class consists of 11 high school students that have little to no entrepreneurial experience. The second week of the program was interrupted due to COVID but we are back on track for students to complete all 9 weeks of our program. The results of the feedback received from our partners is promising because we are meeting the stakeholders' needs.

Our solution is simply an online platform that allows the participants of our program to access all the tools, meetings, whiteboards, and scheduling from a single place. It includes both parts of program management and online learning sites but tailored for students to utilize these tools to be more productive. In the future, we are hoping to test out Machine Learning models to predict student's engagement from different metrics such as time spent on the platform and grades.

We are currently serving 11 high school students (our pilot class) in Arkansas. Our goal for 2022 is to provide K-Startup services to 7% of 11th grade students in Arkansas, which is about 2,463 students. 

2022 is a Prototype to Pilot year for K-Startup. In the first half of 2022 we will be finishing our prototype testing with multiple high schools. In second half of the year we will launch the platform to 10% of high schools in Arkansas. That means that more than 2,000 students (1) will learn from our course. Through the number of assessments we will analyze the impact of the educational materials, and how successful we were in sparking students' entrepreneurship spirit.

Resources:

1. https://adedata.arkansas.gov/Ark12

Through the number of assessments, tests, and data analysis we will learn about the impact of the educational materials, curriculum, and how successful we were in sparking students' entrepreneurship spirit. In other words, our current metrics are: students' engagement in school and percentage of students starting business endeavors. 

Currently, the main barriers for us are time and experience in the educational field. Prototype testing in real high school takes time because a full 9 weeks is required to understand the positive effects of our platform. Once the prototype is tested and iterated we want to have conversations with experts in education to learn about ways of improving our prototype. After that, we desire to move fast in all aspects: developments, sales, support, marketing. For that purpose we will need to assemble a great team of motivated professionals.

This is an issue very dear to my heart since I personally struggled understating the why of my high school education. It was on my senior year when I took programming, that I realized the usefulness of that subject in the real world. I discovered that people create applications through coding to provide services or products to customers; this sparked a strong interest in me for technology and its applications. Therefore, I have made it my goal to help other high school students that may struggle with the same issue to understand that their educational journey is important.

This journey has taken me to triple major in three fields: computer science, applied mathematics, and engineering physics. Also, to participate in multiple internships and research experiences at places like Stanford, MIT, and Amazon. I have strong programming skills that I hope to use for the completion of the K-Startup's platform. My interest in entrepreneurship has led me to teach myself about the business worlds and the tools used to develop successful ideas.

We have our strategic partnerships with Centerpoint High School for our pilot class and the Arkansas Department of Education for guidance in the development of the curriculum. We are in conversations with other high schools to partner up and  launch more pilot classes. 

Not only our solution to the student's engagement problem will also positively impact the educational outcome of girls in high school, but also will increase the business ownership amongst women in the US. If awarded this prize, we will utilize it to complete the development of the platform to start piloting more classes in girls only high schools.