The Future Entrepreneur Challenge Bootcamp — A Way to Up Your Entrepreneurial Skills

Education doesn’t sleep! During the Thanksgiving holidays, Harmony Plus kicked off two FEC bootcamp programs; one for middle school students and the other one for high school students.

The Future Entrepreneur Challenge (FEC) Program is designed for middle and high school students who want to make a difference in the world.

In this exclusive program from Harmony Plus, students learn what it takes to start a business while receiving instruction and mentorship from professionals and entrepreneurs who help them develop real products. Throughout the course, students collaborate with other like-minded ambitious students and work in teams to develop a pitch deck, which they present to a panel of Silicon Valley investors. As students work, they build lasting connections with other students and influential Silicon Valley figures. While the bootcamp version of this program covers a lot in a short amount of time, the skills and connections made are priceless.

Day 1: Problem and Solution

Throughout the four bootcamp sessions, students learned what it takes to start a new business. Starting with the beginning, the first session was all about problems and solutions. To decide what product to create, students broke off into small groups to brainstorm and identify community needs, while thinking of innovative solutions to those problems.

Day 2: Customer Discovery & Value Proposition

The second session covered customer discovery by learning to identify early adopters, as well as understanding the value of their product and the competitive advantages it would have in the market. To do this, the groups first had to build a customer persona, which is a fictitious model of their ideal customer. They then had to decide on their product’s unique value proposition or UVP. A UVP is a statement that describes the benefit of the product, how it solves their ideal customer’s needs, and what distinguishes them from the competition. To give them real-life experience and build essential skills, the students learned how to conduct customer interviews, which they then summarized to validate their UVP.

Day 3: UX Design

Session three was centered around product development. Here, students learned and practiced the UX design process to create a product wireframe. This wireframe was a prototype that visually displayed the layout of their product and acted as a rough sketch of how their pieces of content would work together on a screen. At the end of the day, a business is only as good as its product. So by learning to craft stylish and practical models, students gained a skillful advantage through design.

Day 4: Customer Acquisition and Business Models

With their prototype ready, the fourth session covered customer acquisition and business models. In their groups, students worked collaboratively to develop a customer acquisition strategy, synthesizing the information they learned during their interviews. Based on the product idea and target audience, students then came up with potential solutions to acquire customers who would support their business. As students built their business model, they explored the key components of a business model, essential parts of revenue models, and online marketing tools to ensure that their business was fully built out.

Day 5: Pitch Event

All these sessions and hard work came together on the last day of the program. On this day, four teams of students from the bootcamp pitched their business ideas to a group of judges. The judging panel included:

• Scott Nisbet: A pioneer investor and developer in the first US cellular phone systems, he is currently leading Network Dynamics’ presence in Silicon Valley across technology sectors. He is also the co-founder and Director of Wireless Gaming at Digital Eclipse Software, one of the largest developers of Nintendo GameBoy Games.
• Donji Yamada: UX designer and product manager, he is currently head of design at Metabob, an AI-powered visualization, and coding tool. He is also the chief designer of Clyste, a community-owned and AI-driven social media.
• Avi G.: CTO of Clyste and Metabob owned by NEC, he has worked on various Aerodynamics Research Projects, specializing in novel airfoil design.

The panel judged the groups on the following criteria:

• Value proposition
• Problem size and impact
• Originality of solution
• Target audience segmentation and understanding
• Go to market strategy
• Path to profitability
• Feasibility of the solution
• Communication skills and pitch clarity
• MVP development and user traction

Each group had 6 minutes to present, plus a 10 minute Q&A. To ensure equal participation, each student in the group had to do a quarter of the presentation. Every presentation was presented in a pitch structure that included:

• Team introduction
• Problem
• Solution
• Customer persona
• Market size
• Competitive Advantage
• Business Model
• Customer Acquisition Strategy
• Bonus: Product Demo and traction

The Winners!

After each presentation, the judges gave the student teams comprehensive and helpful feedback. And while all the projects were impressive, two stood out. First, RNote, made up of Eva, Jun, and Enzo from FEC Junior. After seeing their classmates lose important notes, RNote tried to solve that problem so students could study better. To help their classmates, they came up with an app that can recognize handwriting and then scans notes to be stored in a digital notebook. RNote came up with a user friendly, all-inclusive app for a low price that appealed greatly to their user persona of a middle schooler. Their well-constructed wireframe prototype sealed the deal for the judges.

The other top project was Re10 from FEC, created by Austin, Tianmao, and Julia. Re10 was designed to help solve the issue of decreasing health conditions and athletic performance due to pandemic. With over 44% of people working out less because of COVID, Re10 created an app aimed at high school athletes. Re10 worked with coaches to create and assign individual workout plans, to help with motivation and competition. This group interviewed athletes and coaches to design a cohesive wireframe prototype. What made Re10 great was its focus on high school athletes and teams, providing a much-needed advantage in a saturated market. Overall, these two groups took what they learned about product and business, then applied it successfully through their pitch. Way to go!

If these two pitches left you inspired and ready to try your hand at creating your own product, FEC is offering a Christmas Bootcamp. Similar to the Thanksgiving bootcamp in content and length, these sessions offer learning, knowledge, and skills through a competitive business lens. Use your holiday time wisely — sign up now for this exclusive program and gain an advantage in an overly-saturated school application market (see what we did there?)