Organized by Satyam Priyadarshy, Mahesh Joshi.
By Kevin Manuel
WASHINGTON, DC: The Young Entrepreneur (TYE) 10-day boot camp, organized by Satyam Priyardarshy, chief data scientist at Halliburton Corporation, and Mahesh Joshi, director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at George Mason University, concluded on July 18.
TYE is a program of the DC chapter of TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs, one of the largest entrepreneurial networks in the world. The DC boot camp is the brain child of Dr. Priyadarshy.
The fourth annual installment of the entrepreneurial boot camp saw 41 high school students selected from the D.C., Virginia, and Maryland areas, learn and practice the skills they would need to be successful entrepreneurs in the near future.
The camp featured presentations by leading professionals in the area of business, entrepreneurship and law, including the Pillsbury Law Firm, which gave a presentation on the legal aspects of running a business. Additionally, students were given a chance to form groups and work together to create entrepreneurial plans for a business or idea of their choice.
“I see a great change in terms of confidence, being more aware of the world and a willingness to take rejection, said Joshi, speaking to The American Bazaar. “Part of my job is listening to students ideas and I telling them why it will not work. So they have to tweak it and tinker with it… I promote tinkering of ideas. The biggest benefit I see from day one to day ten is students tinkering with ideas.”
The program was also attended by Kavita Priyadarshy, an avid young entrepreneur. This year she got a chance to work on a new project that required using the skills she learned at previous camps.
“We came up with a safety wrist band connected to an app which would help stop attacks on kids and college students,” she said, while describing her experience at the camp. “I‘ve been her the past three years, but this year I really got to apply that into our business plan.”
Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy, who is the President-Elect of the TiE DC chapter, has seen the camp flourish from its inception just four years ago.
“There is need for training young people to become entrepreneurs,” he said, “and the best time to start, based on my experience, is during high school.”
The students have also matured into their own during these camps and Priyadarshy is aware of this fact.
“We have seen their overall presentation style, engagement with the team, their leadership scores, and now they understand the various nuance s of an entrepreneurial business. They can talk more effectively in terms of what the financial model should be, what product and service they should be doing, and they can research better and become competitive in the market,” he said.
Updated on July 30, 2014