Vrinda Wins Start-Up Funding Following Business Bootcamp

Aspiring product designer Year 12 Vrinda Bindal has been awarded US$1000 by the Young Founders School* following her team’s successful pitch to venture capitalists.

The Young Founders School is a two day business bootcamp open to students age 12-18. Vrinda, an IB Business Studies and Design Technology student, signed-up thinking it would be interesting. “I wanted to experience the whole process. I wanted to experience writing a pitch and presenting it. And I wanted to meet some new people.”

Their business idea was to create an App that helps students to stop procrastinating. The App “Happy Bunny” is themed around a bunny that sleeps while students work. Rewards are given for every goal a student achieves. The rewards can be used to keep the bunny happy.

The venture capitalists judging the pitches told Vrinda and her team that they really liked the App but that they need to think about, “in app purchases and a premium version to generate revenue.”

Vrinda, “The age group we are targeting don’t have credit cards to make payments so students need to ask their parents. So we need to think about how we can convince the parents that the App is a good idea.”

Vrinda explains that the process of creating a 3min pitch in just two days was pretty stressful. “I was working with people I hadn’t met before, from different schools. Two days is not that long to create a presentation at a professional level. A long the way we were given lessons on how to create the presentation and the skills we would need i.e. public speaking, how to examine the market and plan revenues.”

The Young Founders School ran workshops and mentors guided them through the entire process giving them tips for the presentation and suggesting ways they could improve their ideas “making them more feasible.’

Vrinda, “The best bits were getting to know my team mates quickly, understanding their strengths and weaknesses and putting all the ideas together. And making the final presentation – that was good.”

Now Vrinda and team has the US $1000 they will start making the App and in April they present to a conference of 6000 venture capitalists. The team will now learn some programming, “Young Founders School have assured us it shouldn’t be that difficult to make the App.”

In the future Vrinda hopes to find a university major that combines business and design and pursue that as a career.

*Credit Swiss sponsors the Young Founders School.