As we approach the culminating TYE Oregon State Competition, let’s reflect on and acknowledge the amazing things our cohort of Community Program students has accomplished thus far. The TiE Young Entrepreneurs program guides middle and high school students interested in STEM, business, and innovation through the challenging process of creating a startup – something many teens do not have the opportunity to do.

Beyond learning the pillars of entrepreneurship, our students brainstorm solutions to real-life problems they observe in their lives, communities, and even the greater global community by applying their passions and interests to create a unique product or service. Our current cohort, with six teams, has worked hard to solve various issues within these parameters. One team, Safi, is developing an app where teens and young adults can find, learn about, and purchase skincare recommended by friends and users. Another team, Soleflyers, identified a shortcoming in current shoe options for volleyball and basketball players and is creating a shoe that prioritizes injury prevention while maximizing vertical jumping abilities, style, and sustainability. Our four other teams are also doing amazing things and solving a wide range of problems; from an AI-based age filtration software that promotes safer web experiences for children to alarm clocks aiming to maximize the quality and quantity of sleep that busy workers get, we’ve certainly seen a lot of creativity.

The next few weeks will be busy for all TYE students as they finalize their products and pitches in preparation for their respective internal pitch competitions in April. A total of 12 teams across all TYE Oregon programs (both in-school programs and the Community Program) will emerge victorious and fight head-to-head in the State Competition for the highly desired first-place prize: a ticket to the TYE Global Competition. We look forward to seeing what everyone has created over the past five months and know that this experience, regardless of the results, is a valuable step forward in these students’ academic and professional journeys.

With our new cohort of TYE Students, I think it’s important to reflect on what TYE is, and what makes it a special program. TYE, specifically the TiE Young Entrepreneurs (TYE) is a global program that teaches students how they can make their own businesses and how to face any challenges they face on their journey. TYE is great because it also teaches fundamental ideas such as how to collaborate with team mates and ensure that they know how to manage a company with the lessons they learn.

What makes TYE so unique is the connections made throughout the program. During the student’s experience, they meet relevant industry leaders who constantly give advice on how they can keep improving on their projects. There is the added benefits of the student leadership, a group of TYE alumni who use their past experiences and knowledge to help students on a more personal level.

An enticing ending to the program would be to compete in the State competition where students will compete against teams not only that you learned concepts with, but with students from schools where we brought the curriculum into.

In April, all twelve finalist teams for this year’s TYE program had the opportunity to compete at the TYE State Competition. I am Clara Finkelstein, and my team, Recycloon, was one of these twelve teams competing at the State Competition. Creating a business surrounding a sustainable, fun alternative to foil balloons granted us the award for “Most Sustainable Business.” While my teammates and I were certainly nervous about presenting our pitch, it was a thrilling experience where we learned to trust our gut and be confident in our work.

My teammates and I participated in TYE through the Community Program with kids from all over the Portland Metro Area, where we had the opportunity to learn the foundations of entrepreneurship in a hybrid model (at virtual and in-person classes) every other Sunday from a variety of instructors – some of whom were not located in Oregon.

For as long as I can remember, everything business has interested me. Going into the program, however, my knowledge of business and entrepreneurship was limited to teaching myself the basics of Etsy and Instagram marketing in middle school, and my “formal” education surrounding the topic was practically non-existent. Some entirely new subjects to me included creating a Lean Canvas, computing Startup Math, and even conducting Customer Interviews. In the past, my process for creating new products was more self-oriented – based on what I wanted to create – but this program taught me the value of obtaining customer validation in order to progress and grow ideas into successful business ventures. Beyond entrepreneurship, TYE taught me the importance of teamwork, accountability, public speaking, and the idea that practice makes progress – skills and concepts I will take with me for the rest of my life.

To future students interested in business: consider participating in TYE! This experience is one of a kind and certainly amplified my love of business. You can take endless paths in this program, and any idea or passion you have, big or small, can flourish into something unique and fulfilling by the end of the course. Additionally, the instructors, Student Co-Directors, Student Mentors, and other TYE students are so supportive and helpful. Entrepreneurship is by no means an easy thing to learn and tackle. But, with all of the amazing resources this program provides, and the community behind the lessons, it is far less scary and will give you a better roadmap for future endeavors you may encounter. I would absolutely participate in TYE as a student again if an opportunity arises, and I look forward to seeing what creations prospective students develop in the 2023-2024 school year.

Last month, TYE students met with their teams in-person to learn more about the fundamentals of customer discovery. It was awesome to see all the teams engaged and ready to interview different people to learn more about their customer values! After the pivot lab, new students and teams joined TYE that are now conducting their first set of customer interviews. On the other hand, there are some groups that are continuing their concepts and gaining more validation from users. These customer interviews are very important, as they help determine the customer’s opinions and pain points. You can also learn more about this through our new TikTok account (@tyeoregon) that is led by the student leads of the program!

The target market for each business is based on the problems they are trying to solve. Some groups will have large groups or businesses as their personas while others will be more focused on individual users. The startups are all creating their own way of talking to their target market in order to get a better understanding of how to improve their product. 

It can be very helpful for businesses to revisit their interview questions and target market. The whole startup process is very iterative so it’s totally normal to alter the questions you ask your customers, the details of a persona, etc. For my team, Ecofitz, the interviews we conducted gave insight on how our target market cared more about sustainability in clothes compared to our original idea of glue. Our previous concept, Styrogoods, was not impactful enough for potential customers. This led to our pivot towards making a convenient and eco-friendly clothing subscription. We used the insights and feedback from the customer to change the services we offered. Although it can take time to conduct interviews, they were a necessary step in our startup journey. Overall, asking questions provides a perspective that can be hard to get as a business!

As the new year rolls in, our TYE teams, mentors, and staff are preparing to hit the ground with full force and bring the student entrepreneurial projects to higher levels! Our first meeting of 2023 will be the pivot lab, some of the most exciting and memorable meetings of the TYE program. During this meeting, students will have the opportunity to completely change the direction of their project to target a new audience, switch up teams based on interests, or even scrap their project and build from the ground up. The pivot lab is an opportunity for students to mold their aspirations to fit their liking by taking what they have learned in the TYE program so far and applying that knowledge to their project decisions. 

As this wonderful workshop approaches, I recall my own experience as a participant of the 2022 TYE pivot lab as a student of the program. During my first couple months in TYE, I had waning confidence in myself due to a lack of passion for my team’s project combined with a feeling of ineffectuality. At the time I was a part of a team of five in which a couple of  members had neither a connection to the issue we were trying to address nor a willingness to work together. Our team’s discrepancy in passion created an unstable project foundation which led to a lack of progress for our team, and made me feel unworthy of a group whose aspirations did not align with my own. Participating in TYE’s pivot lab gave me a space to talk through my feelings regarding my team’s project, connect with my friends and teammates, and make the comfortable choice to “pivot” towards an alternate idea along with a different group of students. The pivot lab was a fun and open space to acknowledge and talk through the feelings of confusion, uncertainty, or excitement that everyone faces when working with within groups, especially entrepreneurial ones. As a mentor of the 2022-23 TYE Oregon program, I am excited to join students along their journey through the upcoming year as they experience the rollercoaster that entrepreneurship brings.

Along with pivot lab, the TYE team is looking forward to welcoming new TYE participants for the month of January! Amazingly, the pivot lab not only offers a space for participants to alter their ideas or project directions, but also provides an opportunity for newcomers to join the program with their friends. I, along with the rest of the TYE team, look forward to all the creativity and awe inspiring projects that our current and future TYE students will bring to the stage over the next couple of months! Apply here to attend Pivot Lab, or learn more about the 2023 program! 

This December, TYE students worked on developing their customer personas and prototypes. Members of each team worked with each other during this session to further develop the customer validation of their ideas. Over the past few weeks, TYE teams contacted a diverse group of individuals to conduct customer interviews and gain important insights for their businesses. These interviews are very important, as they help identify customer pain points and opinions. Open-ended questions help reduce bias in the interview process and enable students to get direct input from their customers. In the in-person sessions, the teams combined their responses to evaluate if their business solution is an effective idea. 

For each business, the customer can be very different. Each TYE business finds their own target market to interview. Some businesses will have actual businesses as their customers while others are designed for different individuals. For my team, Ecofitz, we conducted interviews with a large range of ages to better understand who was most interested in our business concept. This helped us determine that our target market was people of ages 21-30. Sometimes, a team will find their target market by interviewing a completely different group! 

To help with their customer interviews, TYE students use different maps and diagrams to keep track of their target markets. Persona worksheets, for example, help students write out their ideas about who they want to sell to. Interviews can provide a lot of different information about the customer, but persona worksheets help summarize key information about the user. I can’t wait to see how the interviewing and validation process will further improve each team’s business models!

Hi, I’m Nicholas Manoharan and I’m a current Junior at Sunset High School. I did TYE in 2020 where I created a business that helps students with ADHD have an easier way to learn while also incorporating breaks and rewards. I started my role of Associate Student Co-Directer in June. When I did this program in 2020, I learned the back end roles that are needed in order to create my own business. TYE was the spark to my business interests and I am excited for what my future in the business world has in store for me.

As TYE has officially begun, it’s a good time to reflect on what makes TYE such a good place to learn. When in TYE, students get in contact with various people who know the exact process of what students learn during the program and use that knowledge to enhance how well an idea turns out in the long run.

Now that I’m with TYE through the eyes of a Student Co-Director, I am extremely fortunate to take my knowledge of all concepts taught and reinforce how students ideate. I’m super excited for what this year has in store for all of us, but I’m more excited to see what types of business students make!

I’m Krishna Srikanth and I am a senior at Sunset High School. I am one of TYE’s co-directors and have participated in TYE since my sophomore year of high school. In my sophomore year, I learned a lot from TYE more than just about the business world. I learned how to persevere, solve problems, work as a team, and much more. I think that TYE really did a great job of making me a well-rounded person, not to mention how much I learned about entrepreneurship.

With the fall season coming around, TYE is almost ready to start back up. I am so excited to once again take students through the TYE process and have them create their own start-up! One thing I love about the TYE program is that it is a place where students can express their creativity and solve a problem that they are passionate about.

My main goal at TYE is to help students become better people. I know I benefited significantly from TYE, and I would love to extend this to others as well. I think that the TYE program is a great opportunity for anyone looking to try something new.

TYE is back for another year! Applications are out and available on our website for students in grades 8-12. During the program, students will work with each other to create their own startup! Through this process, students learn important skills including iteration, communication, and customer feedback. This year, the program will be virtual for most sessions with some in-person meetings throughout the year. We are very excited to see our students collaborate in person and online. For me, TYE taught me how to bring my ideas into reality and has let me explore my passion for sustainability. I also got to work with an amazing team of students from both Oregon and Washington. At first, we were shy with each other and were new to the process of developing a business model. Through the program, we became more confident in communication and presented our business concept at the global competition! If you have any questions about this year’s program, be sure to reach out to Nicole or one of our Student-Directors.

This summer, TYE hosted entrepreneurship summer camps for students in grades 6-12. During the program, students worked with amazing teachers to solve different problems with innovation and entrepreneurship. All of the students pitched their ideas to their peers at the end of the week! One of the youth instructors, Nykole, has created a series where she interviews different TYE alumni to hear about their experience and how they think TYE can benefit students and communities. Be sure to check out the series on TYE Portland’s instagram.

If you have any questions about what TYE is up to, be sure to reach out to us on our socials or one of our team members!

Congratulations to the TYE teams that presented their ideas and products at the state competition. Phone Phreaks from McDaniel High School won amongst 10 other top-qualifying Oregon teams!  They will now represent TYE Oregon at the global competition, on June 24th and 25th. The team of three created a unique and customizable phone case that the judges loved.

Similar to the pitches at the state competition, Phone Phreaks will be presenting their business model to judges and answer questions. Along with this, global competitors also make a maker fair presentation. This video showcases the purpose and production process of the business. It allows the teams to be creative and show another aspect of their business. Phone Phreaks will also continue to work on their customer validation and use the feedback from the state competition to improve their pitches! To support Phone Phreaks at globals, be sure to register for TYE Globals and cheer on Phone Phreaks! Click here to register.

During the state competition, I got the opportunity to have a fireside chat with Anika Rai, a previous student director for TYE. As the first student director of TYE, Anika created the foundation of TYE’s student leadership program and helped many students improve their business ideas. During the chat, Anika talked about the importance of making connections with students and mentors. Having a support system can provide students with encouragement and resources for their future. TYE, for example, has a great group of instructors, leaders, and alums that TYE students can always try to reach out to! It’s important to make the most out of new experiences, including TYE. 

As the district and state competition comes up, TYE students are working on their 5-minute business pitches and presentations. A big challenge for the students is to ensure their presentation is captivating. However, with the help of a myriad of strategies, it can be done really well. It’s very important for the teams to tell a story in their presentation and highlight the problem and solution they have. Storytelling should be universal and relatable and should have a clear purpose. In TYE, students practice this by doing a variety of exercises to get their storytelling minds warmed up. One of these exercises is the Pixar Pitch. Students follow the format of a Pixar movie to talk about their business and how it solves an important problem. This can be challenging, but certainly helps the students with their presentation skills!

Along with storytelling, it’s important that TYE teams highlight multiple aspects of their business. Factors ranging from problem and solution to teamwork all have to be addressed in this pitch. It also has to be done in 5 minutes, which is not a lot of time. All of the startups have to decide what is important for their judges to know and what detracts from the pitch. This can be a challenging task, but if the presentation is clear and cohesive, 5 minutes can paint a vivid picture about a business.

For my team, Ecofitz, we had a hard time fitting all the information we wanted into 5 minutes. We just had so much to say and couldn’t determine what had to be cut out. The TYE mentors pointed out that the pitch should have a clear purpose,  which we noticed was not the case of our presentation. This one piece of feedback changed our perspective and helped us prioritize certain information over the other parts. We were able to bring down our presentation from double the time to just around 5 minutes! It was amazing to see how much we improved our pitch, and I can’t wait to see all the new TYE teams do the same thing!

This month, TYE students dove deeper into identifying revenues and costs for their businesses. In the innovation trinity, there are three components: viability, feasibility, and desire. Startup math helps the teams determine the viability, or how the team is making a profit with their business model. For each team, the path to profit can be very different. Some companies may have higher costs at the start while others have very little. Startup math helps the TYE businesses determine how they should grow and their financial forecast over time. 

According to Nathan Resnick from Entrepreneur Media, startup math can help a business with more than just financial information. It can help provide motivation for business growth: as broad ideas are defined more, a group’s business model becomes more clear and helps the objectives become more attainable. They also help create goals for a startup to focus on. Setting numeric goals can make it easier to track productivity and motivate the team. Startup math can help create both short term and long term goals and can make it easier to visualize the path the business is taking. 

For my team, Ecoftiz, doing fundamental startup math provided a lot of insight on how we wanted to scale. We discovered costs and revenue channels in our business by writing the numbers out and created long term goals for our business. The startup math we did allowed us to predict how to get to these goals and numbers. I was also able to learn a lot about the different types of costs and revenues, including recurring and fixed costs. It was great to see how much our business model improved with startup math and I can’t wait to see this year’s TYE teams do the same! 

Welcome to the first blog post of 2022!  Now that we are approaching the halfway mark of this year’s Sunday Program, TYE teams are determining if their business is viable, feasible, and desirable, or if it needs a change. If a team decides to persevere with their original idea, they need to think about how to improve it in the next iteration of the program. They can also pivot their original idea. Pivoting is where a team fundamentally changes the direction of their business after realizing the current products or services aren’t meeting the needs of the target market. The last option would be to find a new idea and to look in a different direction. 

Since the start of the Sunday program, all the teams have been following the lean cycle: build, measure, and learn. They have been building prototypes and developing their business model. Some teams even have created minimum viable products (MVPs). It’s important to measure the success of the product by interviewing customers and testing prototypes out. From this, the team can decide to pivot or persevere. 

For my team, Ecofitz, we originally started off as an eco-friendly glue company. However, after lots of customer interviews, we learned that glue was not helping our customers with a pain point. A lot of the interviewees said that clothing was more of an issue for them: It was hard to find eco-friendly and convenient clothing options. This is why we transitioned into a new business model and concept based on these issues. Even though we had less time to  Customer validation played a big role in our pivot! If your target market doesn’t like your idea or feel impacted by it, they won’t buy it.

This month, TYE students have been designing the prototypes of their products. It’s amazing to see the various ways the startups are bringing their ideas into reality. Some teams are using physical materials like cardboard and 3D printers to create tangible products for customers to try. Others are taking a more digital approach by creating apps or videos about their ideas. Rapid prototyping demonstrates the concept of the business and guides the TYE students on how they can improve their business model. It enables more research and customer validation since the students want to know as much about their target market and product as they can. 

A great benefit of rapid prototyping is that it is a continuous process. Teams can always iterate their designs based on what they hear from customers. Customer validation plays a big role in rapid prototyping! For my team, Ecoftiz, we needed to create personalized outfit boxes for our customers. While we were prototyping, we had a few potential customers try out our process. This experience helped us find our strong suits as well as what we needed to improve on. After having them test it out, we improved our surveys and packaging! Since we were improving our designs rapidly, we were able to do this in a time efficient manner.

Along with mockups of their products/services, TYE teams also work on websites and social media accounts for their startups. Their websites help highlight the problem and solution their startup addresses and to provide more information to their customers. It’s important for businesses to keep an online presence to attract more customers. Students are working on creating quality designs in order to give the right impression to the rest of the world. You can find the Instagram handles of all of the startups on our latest Instagram post! We are excited to see what these teams do to improve their prototypes and social media.

The past few years we’ve been so lucky to have Sonali Sampat join TYE as a mentor and a guest instructor. Last week’s Community Session on Customer Discovery, Sonali joined us as an instructor and kicked off the class with an ice breaker: “If you could be any animal, which one would you be and why?” What makes Sonali such a great mentor for our students is her passion for having students open up and “grow using their soft skills.” Her first student response was, “I’d want to be a lioness just because they are beautiful and can do certain things that other animals cant do.”

Sonali’s teaching and mentoring style leads with empathy and truly brings a humility that students can relate to and feel comfortable opening up. “My advice to students,” she says “is that imperfection is your best friend. It’s far better to bring your authentic self into the classroom so that you can give 100% to the task that’s in front of you: learning.”

Read below our brief Q&A in learning more about Sonali.

Let’s get talking about you, Sonali:

Who in your life has been your greatest influence? My father has been the greatest influence in my life, especially as an adult. His drive and dedication to his work and our family in equal measure have given me a vision of what being ambitious and family-oriented can look like.

What do you enjoy most about your job? I love helping people. It sounds ridiculously simple, but knowing that I’m creating inclusive, humanity-centered solutions and contributing to the world we live in gets me out of bed every day.

What is one piece of advice do you follow that someone told you? Some advice I got when I was first starting out that I think is an excellent statement all around, is “your perspective is more valuable than you recognize”. Nobody has your perspective, and you can have a big impact by being yourself.

What are you passionate about?  Education is a big one. I’m part of a variety of organizations and agencies who focus on fostering growth.

Sonali Sampat is a teacher at the University of Oregon, a working member of the Future of Design Education which is an organization standardizing how design is taught around the world, and on the leadership team of an advertising & experience agency called the Inturnship which provides new graduates with community, education, and paid experience working on small to medium sized businesses.

As the first month of the program comes to a wrap, TYE students begin to apply their ideas and develop the foundation of their businesses. At this point, it’s very important for the students to interview potential customers to discover their pain points. Open-ended questions are a great way to do this: They let the customers go more into depth, rather than giving a one dimensional answer. For each business, the customer can be very different. Some will have businesses as their personas while others will be more focused on individual customers. The new startups are all creating their own way of talking to their target market in order to get a better understanding of how to improve their product. 

Sometimes, it can be hard to think of questions to ask your potential customers. Questions can feel too broad sometimes while other times are too specific. However, asking the right questions can help a team identify problems in their product. For my team, Ecofitz, the interviews we did gave insight on how our target market cared more about sustainability in clothes compared to our original idea of glue. Our previous product was not impactful enough for potential customers. This led to our pivot towards making a convenient and eco-friendly clothing subscription. Overall, asking questions provides a perspective that can be hard to get as a business’ team member!

Along with customer interviews, TYE students do several types of exercises and worksheets to learn more about their target market(s). One of these is the empathy map. An empathy map is a worksheet where students write down thoughts and actions that their ideal customer may have. This helps imagine the customer’s perspective of the product and business. Empathy is a big part of the ideation process. It’ll be amazing to see these students further develop their products with the new skills they have just learned!

Last semester we were lucky enough to bring in a group of Nike employees, including the brilliant, enthusiastic Niek Pulles into our McDaniels’ 3D Design class.

Read below on our deep-dive Q&A in learning what fuels Niek as a designer and hearing where the inspiration comes from in his daily life and his work in design and innovation.

Let’s get talking about you, Niek:

Who in your life has been your greatest influence? I think my parents and brothers. A very loving family, both parents were teachers. And my 5 brothers, all being very different, but my parents made it a very well oiled machine. Beautiful to see the evolution of family now that I’m getting older. With every individual being so different and learning how to work as a team, influenced me a lot in my design profession.

What inspires you? Problem solvers, like nature itself, creating and growing. Adapting and changing, like the seasons. But also science & technology and its creativity to always find a way around or through things to solve a curtain problem or issue. A perpetual motion.

What are your aspirations in life? Build, Create, Celebrate and always be there for family and friends. Community is key and giving your heart and soul for it is so satisfying. Set goals and always find a way to work them out and achieve them. Biggest joy in life.

What do you enjoy most about your job? Conceptual thinking and through creative expression and knowledge letting those concepts come to life. Working with a team and making connections with others to make bigger plans and work them out.

What drives you to do better at something? Fail, make mistakes, but note them and learn from them, admit them too and then just re-assess and get better!

What are you passionate about? LIFE, and everything in motion;) I love to go fast. For example, running clears my mind, especially when running in nature. Or snowboarding down a hill. But also a long roadtrip. Just driving in a fun car and let the surroundings, city or nature, flash by in front of your eyes. See the details. That give me so much energy. Zoom in and zoom out;)

If you had to give one piece of advice, what would it be? EMBRACE YOUR ‘WEIRDNESS’ and celebrate it, that’s your unique part nobody will own and it will get you to places, celebrating your uniqueness. Every, single, Day.

Hello everyone! My name is Srinidhi Gubba and I’m one of the Student Directors for TYE Oregon. I was in the TYE program this past year and had such an amazing experience!

My team, Ecofitz, created a personalized subscription service that sends out thrifted and sustainable clothing boxes to our customers every month. As someone who cares a lot about the environment, I loved how TYE motivated my team to look at sustainable options when creating our startup. Along with that, the Sunday program taught me so much about business and innovation: I have gained skills in customer validation, ideation, creating lean canvases, etc.

Before TYE, I had no idea what a lean canvas was or how to go about market interviews. I have grown a lot since then. The best part was being able to learn alongside my team. At first, we were all a little shy and confused. However, as we progressed through the program, we became more open to communication and empowered each other. The mentors created a safe environment for discussion; I hope to do the same thing as a student mentor this year.

With hard work and a strong TYE support system, my team was able to grow Ecofitz and make unique outfits for customers. Throughout the year, my team and I would continue to iterate our business model and interview more and more people that fit our target market. This helped us stand out as a startup and led us to the global competition!

Globals was an awesome experience to have. Despite being virtual, I still got to do many things like make a professional pitch and listen to keynote speakers. At times, I would get a little stressed from all the work that needed to be done in the short-time span. My mentors were so helpful, especially when I felt confused or pressured. They would meet with the team as often as they could and helped us manage our time . I will always be grateful for all the support we received from them!

My time in the program made such a big impact on both my professional and personal development: I have made bonds that I’ll have for a lifetime and grew my knowledge of business and communication immensely. I hope that the new TYE students will feel the same way after the program.

This year, the Sunday program is held every other Sunday. The TYE members will learn essential concepts related to building a startup as well as working on their own business with a team. Students from grade 8 to 12 can apply on the TiE Oregon website. If you have any questions about the program, feel free to contact our Program Manager, Nicole Marris [email protected].

With our new cohort of TYE Students, I think it’s important to reflect on what TYE is, and what makes it a special program. TYE, specifically the TiE Young Entrepreneurs (TYE) is a global program that teaches students how they can make their own businesses and how to face any challenges they face on their journey. TYE is great because it also teaches fundamental ideas such as how to collaborate with team mates and ensure that they know how to manage a company with the lessons they learn.

What makes TYE so unique is the connections made throughout the program. During the student’s experience, they meet relevant industry leaders who constantly give advice on how they can keep improving on their projects. There is the added benefits of the student leadership, a group of TYE alumni who use their past experiences and knowledge to help students on a more personal level.

An enticing ending to the program would be to compete in the State competition where students will compete against teams not only that you learned concepts with, but with students from schools where we brought the curriculum into.

In April, all twelve finalist teams for this year’s TYE program had the opportunity to compete at the TYE State Competition. I am Clara Finkelstein, and my team, Recycloon, was one of these twelve teams competing at the State Competition. Creating a business surrounding a sustainable, fun alternative to foil balloons granted us the award for “Most Sustainable Business.” While my teammates and I were certainly nervous about presenting our pitch, it was a thrilling experience where we learned to trust our gut and be confident in our work.

My teammates and I participated in TYE through the Community Program with kids from all over the Portland Metro Area, where we had the opportunity to learn the foundations of entrepreneurship in a hybrid model (at virtual and in-person classes) every other Sunday from a variety of instructors – some of whom were not located in Oregon.

For as long as I can remember, everything business has interested me. Going into the program, however, my knowledge of business and entrepreneurship was limited to teaching myself the basics of Etsy and Instagram marketing in middle school, and my “formal” education surrounding the topic was practically non-existent. Some entirely new subjects to me included creating a Lean Canvas, computing Startup Math, and even conducting Customer Interviews. In the past, my process for creating new products was more self-oriented – based on what I wanted to create – but this program taught me the value of obtaining customer validation in order to progress and grow ideas into successful business ventures. Beyond entrepreneurship, TYE taught me the importance of teamwork, accountability, public speaking, and the idea that practice makes progress – skills and concepts I will take with me for the rest of my life.

To future students interested in business: consider participating in TYE! This experience is one of a kind and certainly amplified my love of business. You can take endless paths in this program, and any idea or passion you have, big or small, can flourish into something unique and fulfilling by the end of the course. Additionally, the instructors, Student Co-Directors, Student Mentors, and other TYE students are so supportive and helpful. Entrepreneurship is by no means an easy thing to learn and tackle. But, with all of the amazing resources this program provides, and the community behind the lessons, it is far less scary and will give you a better roadmap for future endeavors you may encounter. I would absolutely participate in TYE as a student again if an opportunity arises, and I look forward to seeing what creations prospective students develop in the 2023-2024 school year.

Last month, TYE students met with their teams in-person to learn more about the fundamentals of customer discovery. It was awesome to see all the teams engaged and ready to interview different people to learn more about their customer values! After the pivot lab, new students and teams joined TYE that are now conducting their first set of customer interviews. On the other hand, there are some groups that are continuing their concepts and gaining more validation from users. These customer interviews are very important, as they help determine the customer’s opinions and pain points. You can also learn more about this through our new TikTok account (@tyeoregon) that is led by the student leads of the program!

The target market for each business is based on the problems they are trying to solve. Some groups will have large groups or businesses as their personas while others will be more focused on individual users. The startups are all creating their own way of talking to their target market in order to get a better understanding of how to improve their product. 

It can be very helpful for businesses to revisit their interview questions and target market. The whole startup process is very iterative so it’s totally normal to alter the questions you ask your customers, the details of a persona, etc. For my team, Ecofitz, the interviews we conducted gave insight on how our target market cared more about sustainability in clothes compared to our original idea of glue. Our previous concept, Styrogoods, was not impactful enough for potential customers. This led to our pivot towards making a convenient and eco-friendly clothing subscription. We used the insights and feedback from the customer to change the services we offered. Although it can take time to conduct interviews, they were a necessary step in our startup journey. Overall, asking questions provides a perspective that can be hard to get as a business!

As the new year rolls in, our TYE teams, mentors, and staff are preparing to hit the ground with full force and bring the student entrepreneurial projects to higher levels! Our first meeting of 2023 will be the pivot lab, some of the most exciting and memorable meetings of the TYE program. During this meeting, students will have the opportunity to completely change the direction of their project to target a new audience, switch up teams based on interests, or even scrap their project and build from the ground up. The pivot lab is an opportunity for students to mold their aspirations to fit their liking by taking what they have learned in the TYE program so far and applying that knowledge to their project decisions. 

As this wonderful workshop approaches, I recall my own experience as a participant of the 2022 TYE pivot lab as a student of the program. During my first couple months in TYE, I had waning confidence in myself due to a lack of passion for my team’s project combined with a feeling of ineffectuality. At the time I was a part of a team of five in which a couple of  members had neither a connection to the issue we were trying to address nor a willingness to work together. Our team’s discrepancy in passion created an unstable project foundation which led to a lack of progress for our team, and made me feel unworthy of a group whose aspirations did not align with my own. Participating in TYE’s pivot lab gave me a space to talk through my feelings regarding my team’s project, connect with my friends and teammates, and make the comfortable choice to “pivot” towards an alternate idea along with a different group of students. The pivot lab was a fun and open space to acknowledge and talk through the feelings of confusion, uncertainty, or excitement that everyone faces when working with within groups, especially entrepreneurial ones. As a mentor of the 2022-23 TYE Oregon program, I am excited to join students along their journey through the upcoming year as they experience the rollercoaster that entrepreneurship brings.

Along with pivot lab, the TYE team is looking forward to welcoming new TYE participants for the month of January! Amazingly, the pivot lab not only offers a space for participants to alter their ideas or project directions, but also provides an opportunity for newcomers to join the program with their friends. I, along with the rest of the TYE team, look forward to all the creativity and awe inspiring projects that our current and future TYE students will bring to the stage over the next couple of months! Apply here to attend Pivot Lab, or learn more about the 2023 program! 

This December, TYE students worked on developing their customer personas and prototypes. Members of each team worked with each other during this session to further develop the customer validation of their ideas. Over the past few weeks, TYE teams contacted a diverse group of individuals to conduct customer interviews and gain important insights for their businesses. These interviews are very important, as they help identify customer pain points and opinions. Open-ended questions help reduce bias in the interview process and enable students to get direct input from their customers. In the in-person sessions, the teams combined their responses to evaluate if their business solution is an effective idea. 

For each business, the customer can be very different. Each TYE business finds their own target market to interview. Some businesses will have actual businesses as their customers while others are designed for different individuals. For my team, Ecofitz, we conducted interviews with a large range of ages to better understand who was most interested in our business concept. This helped us determine that our target market was people of ages 21-30. Sometimes, a team will find their target market by interviewing a completely different group! 

To help with their customer interviews, TYE students use different maps and diagrams to keep track of their target markets. Persona worksheets, for example, help students write out their ideas about who they want to sell to. Interviews can provide a lot of different information about the customer, but persona worksheets help summarize key information about the user. I can’t wait to see how the interviewing and validation process will further improve each team’s business models!

Hi, I’m Nicholas Manoharan and I’m a current Junior at Sunset High School. I did TYE in 2020 where I created a business that helps students with ADHD have an easier way to learn while also incorporating breaks and rewards. I started my role of Associate Student Co-Directer in June. When I did this program in 2020, I learned the back end roles that are needed in order to create my own business. TYE was the spark to my business interests and I am excited for what my future in the business world has in store for me.

As TYE has officially begun, it’s a good time to reflect on what makes TYE such a good place to learn. When in TYE, students get in contact with various people who know the exact process of what students learn during the program and use that knowledge to enhance how well an idea turns out in the long run.

Now that I’m with TYE through the eyes of a Student Co-Director, I am extremely fortunate to take my knowledge of all concepts taught and reinforce how students ideate. I’m super excited for what this year has in store for all of us, but I’m more excited to see what types of business students make!

I’m Krishna Srikanth and I am a senior at Sunset High School. I am one of TYE’s co-directors and have participated in TYE since my sophomore year of high school. In my sophomore year, I learned a lot from TYE more than just about the business world. I learned how to persevere, solve problems, work as a team, and much more. I think that TYE really did a great job of making me a well-rounded person, not to mention how much I learned about entrepreneurship.

With the fall season coming around, TYE is almost ready to start back up. I am so excited to once again take students through the TYE process and have them create their own start-up! One thing I love about the TYE program is that it is a place where students can express their creativity and solve a problem that they are passionate about.

My main goal at TYE is to help students become better people. I know I benefited significantly from TYE, and I would love to extend this to others as well. I think that the TYE program is a great opportunity for anyone looking to try something new.

TYE is back for another year! Applications are out and available on our website for students in grades 8-12. During the program, students will work with each other to create their own startup! Through this process, students learn important skills including iteration, communication, and customer feedback. This year, the program will be virtual for most sessions with some in-person meetings throughout the year. We are very excited to see our students collaborate in person and online. For me, TYE taught me how to bring my ideas into reality and has let me explore my passion for sustainability. I also got to work with an amazing team of students from both Oregon and Washington. At first, we were shy with each other and were new to the process of developing a business model. Through the program, we became more confident in communication and presented our business concept at the global competition! If you have any questions about this year’s program, be sure to reach out to Nicole or one of our Student-Directors.

This summer, TYE hosted entrepreneurship summer camps for students in grades 6-12. During the program, students worked with amazing teachers to solve different problems with innovation and entrepreneurship. All of the students pitched their ideas to their peers at the end of the week! One of the youth instructors, Nykole, has created a series where she interviews different TYE alumni to hear about their experience and how they think TYE can benefit students and communities. Be sure to check out the series on TYE Portland’s instagram.

If you have any questions about what TYE is up to, be sure to reach out to us on our socials or one of our team members!

Congratulations to the TYE teams that presented their ideas and products at the state competition. Phone Phreaks from McDaniel High School won amongst 10 other top-qualifying Oregon teams!  They will now represent TYE Oregon at the global competition, on June 24th and 25th. The team of three created a unique and customizable phone case that the judges loved.

Similar to the pitches at the state competition, Phone Phreaks will be presenting their business model to judges and answer questions. Along with this, global competitors also make a maker fair presentation. This video showcases the purpose and production process of the business. It allows the teams to be creative and show another aspect of their business. Phone Phreaks will also continue to work on their customer validation and use the feedback from the state competition to improve their pitches! To support Phone Phreaks at globals, be sure to register for TYE Globals and cheer on Phone Phreaks! Click here to register.

During the state competition, I got the opportunity to have a fireside chat with Anika Rai, a previous student director for TYE. As the first student director of TYE, Anika created the foundation of TYE’s student leadership program and helped many students improve their business ideas. During the chat, Anika talked about the importance of making connections with students and mentors. Having a support system can provide students with encouragement and resources for their future. TYE, for example, has a great group of instructors, leaders, and alums that TYE students can always try to reach out to! It’s important to make the most out of new experiences, including TYE. 

As the district and state competition comes up, TYE students are working on their 5-minute business pitches and presentations. A big challenge for the students is to ensure their presentation is captivating. However, with the help of a myriad of strategies, it can be done really well. It’s very important for the teams to tell a story in their presentation and highlight the problem and solution they have. Storytelling should be universal and relatable and should have a clear purpose. In TYE, students practice this by doing a variety of exercises to get their storytelling minds warmed up. One of these exercises is the Pixar Pitch. Students follow the format of a Pixar movie to talk about their business and how it solves an important problem. This can be challenging, but certainly helps the students with their presentation skills!

Along with storytelling, it’s important that TYE teams highlight multiple aspects of their business. Factors ranging from problem and solution to teamwork all have to be addressed in this pitch. It also has to be done in 5 minutes, which is not a lot of time. All of the startups have to decide what is important for their judges to know and what detracts from the pitch. This can be a challenging task, but if the presentation is clear and cohesive, 5 minutes can paint a vivid picture about a business.

For my team, Ecofitz, we had a hard time fitting all the information we wanted into 5 minutes. We just had so much to say and couldn’t determine what had to be cut out. The TYE mentors pointed out that the pitch should have a clear purpose,  which we noticed was not the case of our presentation. This one piece of feedback changed our perspective and helped us prioritize certain information over the other parts. We were able to bring down our presentation from double the time to just around 5 minutes! It was amazing to see how much we improved our pitch, and I can’t wait to see all the new TYE teams do the same thing!

This month, TYE students dove deeper into identifying revenues and costs for their businesses. In the innovation trinity, there are three components: viability, feasibility, and desire. Startup math helps the teams determine the viability, or how the team is making a profit with their business model. For each team, the path to profit can be very different. Some companies may have higher costs at the start while others have very little. Startup math helps the TYE businesses determine how they should grow and their financial forecast over time. 

According to Nathan Resnick from Entrepreneur Media, startup math can help a business with more than just financial information. It can help provide motivation for business growth: as broad ideas are defined more, a group’s business model becomes more clear and helps the objectives become more attainable. They also help create goals for a startup to focus on. Setting numeric goals can make it easier to track productivity and motivate the team. Startup math can help create both short term and long term goals and can make it easier to visualize the path the business is taking. 

For my team, Ecoftiz, doing fundamental startup math provided a lot of insight on how we wanted to scale. We discovered costs and revenue channels in our business by writing the numbers out and created long term goals for our business. The startup math we did allowed us to predict how to get to these goals and numbers. I was also able to learn a lot about the different types of costs and revenues, including recurring and fixed costs. It was great to see how much our business model improved with startup math and I can’t wait to see this year’s TYE teams do the same! 

Welcome to the first blog post of 2022!  Now that we are approaching the halfway mark of this year’s Sunday Program, TYE teams are determining if their business is viable, feasible, and desirable, or if it needs a change. If a team decides to persevere with their original idea, they need to think about how to improve it in the next iteration of the program. They can also pivot their original idea. Pivoting is where a team fundamentally changes the direction of their business after realizing the current products or services aren’t meeting the needs of the target market. The last option would be to find a new idea and to look in a different direction. 

Since the start of the Sunday program, all the teams have been following the lean cycle: build, measure, and learn. They have been building prototypes and developing their business model. Some teams even have created minimum viable products (MVPs). It’s important to measure the success of the product by interviewing customers and testing prototypes out. From this, the team can decide to pivot or persevere. 

For my team, Ecofitz, we originally started off as an eco-friendly glue company. However, after lots of customer interviews, we learned that glue was not helping our customers with a pain point. A lot of the interviewees said that clothing was more of an issue for them: It was hard to find eco-friendly and convenient clothing options. This is why we transitioned into a new business model and concept based on these issues. Even though we had less time to  Customer validation played a big role in our pivot! If your target market doesn’t like your idea or feel impacted by it, they won’t buy it.

This month, TYE students have been designing the prototypes of their products. It’s amazing to see the various ways the startups are bringing their ideas into reality. Some teams are using physical materials like cardboard and 3D printers to create tangible products for customers to try. Others are taking a more digital approach by creating apps or videos about their ideas. Rapid prototyping demonstrates the concept of the business and guides the TYE students on how they can improve their business model. It enables more research and customer validation since the students want to know as much about their target market and product as they can. 

A great benefit of rapid prototyping is that it is a continuous process. Teams can always iterate their designs based on what they hear from customers. Customer validation plays a big role in rapid prototyping! For my team, Ecoftiz, we needed to create personalized outfit boxes for our customers. While we were prototyping, we had a few potential customers try out our process. This experience helped us find our strong suits as well as what we needed to improve on. After having them test it out, we improved our surveys and packaging! Since we were improving our designs rapidly, we were able to do this in a time efficient manner.

Along with mockups of their products/services, TYE teams also work on websites and social media accounts for their startups. Their websites help highlight the problem and solution their startup addresses and to provide more information to their customers. It’s important for businesses to keep an online presence to attract more customers. Students are working on creating quality designs in order to give the right impression to the rest of the world. You can find the Instagram handles of all of the startups on our latest Instagram post! We are excited to see what these teams do to improve their prototypes and social media.

The past few years we’ve been so lucky to have Sonali Sampat join TYE as a mentor and a guest instructor. Last week’s Community Session on Customer Discovery, Sonali joined us as an instructor and kicked off the class with an ice breaker: “If you could be any animal, which one would you be and why?” What makes Sonali such a great mentor for our students is her passion for having students open up and “grow using their soft skills.” Her first student response was, “I’d want to be a lioness just because they are beautiful and can do certain things that other animals cant do.”

Sonali’s teaching and mentoring style leads with empathy and truly brings a humility that students can relate to and feel comfortable opening up. “My advice to students,” she says “is that imperfection is your best friend. It’s far better to bring your authentic self into the classroom so that you can give 100% to the task that’s in front of you: learning.”

Read below our brief Q&A in learning more about Sonali.

Let’s get talking about you, Sonali:

Who in your life has been your greatest influence? My father has been the greatest influence in my life, especially as an adult. His drive and dedication to his work and our family in equal measure have given me a vision of what being ambitious and family-oriented can look like.

What do you enjoy most about your job? I love helping people. It sounds ridiculously simple, but knowing that I’m creating inclusive, humanity-centered solutions and contributing to the world we live in gets me out of bed every day.

What is one piece of advice do you follow that someone told you? Some advice I got when I was first starting out that I think is an excellent statement all around, is “your perspective is more valuable than you recognize”. Nobody has your perspective, and you can have a big impact by being yourself.

What are you passionate about?  Education is a big one. I’m part of a variety of organizations and agencies who focus on fostering growth.

Sonali Sampat is a teacher at the University of Oregon, a working member of the Future of Design Education which is an organization standardizing how design is taught around the world, and on the leadership team of an advertising & experience agency called the Inturnship which provides new graduates with community, education, and paid experience working on small to medium sized businesses.

As the first month of the program comes to a wrap, TYE students begin to apply their ideas and develop the foundation of their businesses. At this point, it’s very important for the students to interview potential customers to discover their pain points. Open-ended questions are a great way to do this: They let the customers go more into depth, rather than giving a one dimensional answer. For each business, the customer can be very different. Some will have businesses as their personas while others will be more focused on individual customers. The new startups are all creating their own way of talking to their target market in order to get a better understanding of how to improve their product. 

Sometimes, it can be hard to think of questions to ask your potential customers. Questions can feel too broad sometimes while other times are too specific. However, asking the right questions can help a team identify problems in their product. For my team, Ecofitz, the interviews we did gave insight on how our target market cared more about sustainability in clothes compared to our original idea of glue. Our previous product was not impactful enough for potential customers. This led to our pivot towards making a convenient and eco-friendly clothing subscription. Overall, asking questions provides a perspective that can be hard to get as a business’ team member!

Along with customer interviews, TYE students do several types of exercises and worksheets to learn more about their target market(s). One of these is the empathy map. An empathy map is a worksheet where students write down thoughts and actions that their ideal customer may have. This helps imagine the customer’s perspective of the product and business. Empathy is a big part of the ideation process. It’ll be amazing to see these students further develop their products with the new skills they have just learned!

Last semester we were lucky enough to bring in a group of Nike employees, including the brilliant, enthusiastic Niek Pulles into our McDaniels’ 3D Design class.

Read below on our deep-dive Q&A in learning what fuels Niek as a designer and hearing where the inspiration comes from in his daily life and his work in design and innovation.

Let’s get talking about you, Niek:

Who in your life has been your greatest influence? I think my parents and brothers. A very loving family, both parents were teachers. And my 5 brothers, all being very different, but my parents made it a very well oiled machine. Beautiful to see the evolution of family now that I’m getting older. With every individual being so different and learning how to work as a team, influenced me a lot in my design profession.

What inspires you? Problem solvers, like nature itself, creating and growing. Adapting and changing, like the seasons. But also science & technology and its creativity to always find a way around or through things to solve a curtain problem or issue. A perpetual motion.

What are your aspirations in life? Build, Create, Celebrate and always be there for family and friends. Community is key and giving your heart and soul for it is so satisfying. Set goals and always find a way to work them out and achieve them. Biggest joy in life.

What do you enjoy most about your job? Conceptual thinking and through creative expression and knowledge letting those concepts come to life. Working with a team and making connections with others to make bigger plans and work them out.

What drives you to do better at something? Fail, make mistakes, but note them and learn from them, admit them too and then just re-assess and get better!

What are you passionate about? LIFE, and everything in motion;) I love to go fast. For example, running clears my mind, especially when running in nature. Or snowboarding down a hill. But also a long roadtrip. Just driving in a fun car and let the surroundings, city or nature, flash by in front of your eyes. See the details. That give me so much energy. Zoom in and zoom out;)

If you had to give one piece of advice, what would it be? EMBRACE YOUR ‘WEIRDNESS’ and celebrate it, that’s your unique part nobody will own and it will get you to places, celebrating your uniqueness. Every, single, Day.

Hello everyone! My name is Srinidhi Gubba and I’m one of the Student Directors for TYE Oregon. I was in the TYE program this past year and had such an amazing experience!

My team, Ecofitz, created a personalized subscription service that sends out thrifted and sustainable clothing boxes to our customers every month. As someone who cares a lot about the environment, I loved how TYE motivated my team to look at sustainable options when creating our startup. Along with that, the Sunday program taught me so much about business and innovation: I have gained skills in customer validation, ideation, creating lean canvases, etc.

Before TYE, I had no idea what a lean canvas was or how to go about market interviews. I have grown a lot since then. The best part was being able to learn alongside my team. At first, we were all a little shy and confused. However, as we progressed through the program, we became more open to communication and empowered each other. The mentors created a safe environment for discussion; I hope to do the same thing as a student mentor this year.

With hard work and a strong TYE support system, my team was able to grow Ecofitz and make unique outfits for customers. Throughout the year, my team and I would continue to iterate our business model and interview more and more people that fit our target market. This helped us stand out as a startup and led us to the global competition!

Globals was an awesome experience to have. Despite being virtual, I still got to do many things like make a professional pitch and listen to keynote speakers. At times, I would get a little stressed from all the work that needed to be done in the short-time span. My mentors were so helpful, especially when I felt confused or pressured. They would meet with the team as often as they could and helped us manage our time . I will always be grateful for all the support we received from them!

My time in the program made such a big impact on both my professional and personal development: I have made bonds that I’ll have for a lifetime and grew my knowledge of business and communication immensely. I hope that the new TYE students will feel the same way after the program.

This year, the Sunday program is held every other Sunday. The TYE members will learn essential concepts related to building a startup as well as working on their own business with a team. Students from grade 8 to 12 can apply on the TiE Oregon website. If you have any questions about the program, feel free to contact our Program Manager, Nicole Marris [email protected].