The Jack O'Hollaren Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award
Since 2021, the Jack O’Hollaren family partnered with TiE Young Entrepreneurs (TYE) in offering the Jack O’Hollaren Young Entrepreneur Award. This award honors one outstanding TYE student that embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of a previous student, Jack O’Hollaren.
Jack was a previous TiE Young Entrepreneur Program Participant, Lincoln High School graduate, and attended the University of Oregon to his sophomore year. That same year, in 2016, Jack was unexpectedly taken from us in a tragic accident off the Oregon Coast. TYE and Jack’s Family have joined together to make sure that Jack’s entrepreneurial spirit lives on.
In addition to the award, Jack’s family has started a scholarship for deserving students wanting to participate in the TiE Young Entrepreneurs Program. Please join Jack’s family and make a tax-deductible contribution to this fund here.
2023 Winner Update and Bio: Naren met a group of like-minded individuals from an online founder community and developed a friendship, having never met in person, that grew into them starting a business idea. Although COVID & the rise of online communities played a major role in them eventually meeting and becoming friends, their initial asynchronous community was the inspiration for the team to build a software to bridge a gap that arose from the pandemic.
Naren and his co-founders started Altr because they saw that community managers at startups & other larger businesses were having a tough time figuring out how best to grow their community & translate that value into a positive business outcome.
Over a few months from a soft launch of Altr, adoption numbers scaled from 0 to over 3M+ users across 250+ communities. As a result of that growth, Altr had a lot of inbound interest from other companies in the community space. They eventually decided Commsor.com would be a great partner to help push their product to a much larger enterprise customer base. After pursuing 5 months of merger and acquisition (M&A) negotiations, Altr was acquired in January 2022 for a sum in the low 7 figures.
Naren was a 2016 TYE program participant, and received his first startup internship as a result of attending TYE.
2022 Award Recipients
Serendipity Lang
At the time of the award, Serendipity (Sera) Lang was a senior at McDaniel High School and a 2021 TYE program participant. Sera has been the owner of a slime company since middle school where she sells slime online.
When she became part of the TYE program, she wanted her team to do something more important for the community around them, and that is when they created The Hive. The Hive is a spot where houseless teens can be fed, get help with school, enjoy learning fun activities, and work with mentors. Within weeks, Sera and her female led team had created a pitch deck and participated in the TYE State Competition. Although they did not win the competition, Sera and her team received funding to bring their vision to life.
Ashley Lin
Ashley Lin is currently a student of the University of Pennsylvania Management & Technology Program. She was a 2018 TYE program participant but then continued to participate in TYE through student leadership. Ashley had a tremendous impact in TYE. Beginning with her first year, building and leading the team for Summer App to being appointed as student director in the Community Program for the 2020-2021 school year.
And to top it all off, she also managed to find time to write and publish a book (during the pandemic) while wrapping up her senior year of high school and TYE.
Much of our successes wouldn’t be possible for the grants and donations we receive in order to continue TYE in classrooms throughout PPS and fund entrepreneurship and invention to students with the interest and drive to succeed.
If you’d like more info on donations or our cause, please email our Program Manager, Nicole Marris [email protected] or donate below.
A donation of:
- $100 PROVIDES A CHROMEBOOK TO ONE STUDENT
- $250 SPONSORS ONE STUDENT IN THE COMMUNITY PROGRAM
- $500 PROVIDES A TEAM WITH PROTOTYPING MATERIALS
- $1000 SENDS STUDENTS TO THE TYE GLOBAL COMPETITION.
- TO ADD ANOTHER CLASS OR EXPAND TO ANOTHER SCHOOL COSTS $12,000.
CONTACT
Nicole Marris | Program Manager, TiE Oregon Foundation | [email protected]
Jill Jeske | Program Coordinator, TiE Oregon Foundation | [email protected]
Thank you to all of our supporters!
