A group of high school-aged entrepreneurs from Richmond is hoping to be “pitch perfect” tomorrow (May 1) as they compete for a spot in the finals of a special business education program
Called YELL (Young Entrepreneur Leadership Launchpad), it’s a nine-week long endeavour that ultimately pitted four teams of four students against each other to research, develop and present an original business idea, all with the assistance of locally based mentors.
The team judged to be the best will be selected Friday to pitch their product the following day at Venture Challenge, a competition involving winning YELL teams from two other school districts (West Vancouver and Coquitlam) that will also be trying to impress a panel of judges — made up of professional investors and business leaders — in a fashion similar to the popular reality TV series Dragon’s Den.
All of the YELL teams will be presenting their business ideas at UBC Robson Square in Downtown Vancouver.
It’s a high stakes challenge with the chance to win some one-on-one coaching through e@UBC (entrepreneurship@UBC) which aims to inspire and encourage entrepreneurial thinking, as well as create innovative commercial and social ventures.
As the students practised their presentations at Richmond secondary school on Monday evening, the Newsasked them what their team would have to do to win a spot in the final round.
“You need confidence and passion,” said Colin Szeplabi, a Grade 12 student at McRoberts secondary whose team developed a home gardening product called Bloom Box that provides customers with vegetable seeds, plus information on proper cultivation techniques and healthy eating advice for the homegrown produce. “If you don’t have those two you’re not going to get through.”
“Yeah, you have to have confidence that your idea is the best,” added Zen Bellani, a Grade 12 student at McMath secondary whose group came up with Your Car Guys, a used vehicle maintenance service for owners that is part concierge and part quality assurance provider.
“If you don’t believe in your idea, how can you expect anyone else to believe in it?” said Zaahid Merali who is in Grade 11 at McNair secondary. Merali’s group developed In the Know, a smart phone app that notifies its users of current sales at local malls that subscribe to the service.
“It’s really important to know every single aspect of your business because the judges will be seeing if this can be a realistic product,” said Alyssa Chen, a Grade 12 student at McRoberts secondary whose group developed NuMu, a computer tablet-based instructional aid for music students.
The students also placed plenty of emphasis on the quality of their presentations.
“If you don’t execute the pitch the way you want to, it can all blow up on you,” Szeplabi said.
“The biggest challenge is cohesion within the group while presenting,” Bellani added. “You all need to be on the same page and also be able to cover for each other.
“If you can do that it can be a really smooth delivery.”
“You need to appeal to the audience,” Merali said. “If they don’t like you, you really don’t have a shot. And it’s all or nothing.”
So, why did these youngsters commit themselves to YELL?
“The business side of it really appealed to me because I am going on to study economics at UBC starting next year,” Bellani said. “Plus, the chance to meet mentors was really appealing because you can learn from them and gain a lot of experience.”
“I saw it as a real opportunity for me to learn about business and entrepreneurship since I want to go to UBC and the Sauder School of Business,” Merali said. “I wanted a chance to see what the real business world is like. I also feel entrepreneurship is very open to different ideas. And although there’s an element of risk to it, it’s also very interesting.”
“For me personally, I still hadn’t at the beginning of Grade 12 found out what my passion was. So, this year my goal was to try new things, said Chen. “It gave me a whole new perspective on academics. I never thought of entrepreneurship as something I could do. So, I took this as an opportunity to explore boundaries, because I had really only focused on sciences and social studies.”
“I think this program is different from the typical business courses that high schools offer because we get the chance to work with a team, as well being paired up with a mentor to create an original idea,” added Alice Zong, a Grade 12 student at Richmond secondary who also worked on developing NuMu. “It was also a chance to meet other people from other schools who share similar interests.”
And what lessons will they take with them once YELL has wrapped up and selected a winner?
“Leadership, innovation and really just the knowledge of what it takes to succeed anywhere,” Bellani said.
“It will have been nice to have attained more of an insight of the business world, that’s the biggest thing I will be taking away,” said Merali.
“My biggest take away will be understanding that there is a direct relationship between the amount of effort you put in and the results you get,” said Szeplabi, who added having mentors guiding their work brought that aspect into focus.
During the course of the program there has been an appreciable measure of growth in the students as they honed their projects, said Kuldeep Gill who teaches business education at Richmond secondary and coordinates the YELL program.
“The program is designed to foster creativity and thought,” Gill added. “And they’ve done this as a team in a way that’s not in a traditional classroom setting.”
