L.A. County Teens Use Tech to Pitch Business Plans

More than 60 high school students in Los Angeles County learned to use technology to make business plans in an after-school program, which ended last week with the Young Innovators Accelerator Pitch Competition.

The after-school program took place at six Best Buy Teen Tech Centers across Los Angeles County. The centers are run by nonprofits in under-resourced neighborhoods with funding from the Best Buy Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation and the Greater Los Angeles Education Foundation (GLAEF), the philanthropic arm of the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

The Teen Tech Centers aim to give area students a chance to play with the latest technology — and gain job skills in the process, according to Sam Gelinas, vice president of programs, strategy and development at GLAEF. The Young Innovators Accelerator Pitch Competition, now in its second year, furthers the focus on job skills, he said.
“The process of developing a budget, developing all the assets, all of that stuff, they’re building some of those soft business skills, and then also some of the tech skills like actually designing a deck and those kinds of things,” Gelinas said.

Curriculum and training for the program were provided by the Los Angeles Economic Equity Accelerator and Fellowship, a nonprofit based out of California State University, Los Angeles, Gelinas said.

“The trainers were young and dynamic and sort of met students where they were and walked them through the elements of entrepreneurship,” he said.

On top of learning to use technology to build a business plan, many of the students came up with services that center on tech. For example, the winning idea at last week’s competition was an artificial intelligence-driven ed-tech tool, pitched by 14-year-old Gabriel Cardenas. Called ByteAi, the tool would use AI to transform complex classroom subjects into “bite-sized” lessons, without telling students any answers, according to Cardenas, a freshman at the California Academy of Math and Science in Long Beach.

“My teacher would give me an assignment, and it was really hard for me to completely understand what I really needed to learn,” Cardenas said. “With this, you could ask the AI to break it down and make it more understandable, and it would give you key highlights, quizzes and games.”

Among the six business plans that made it to the competition last week, three others were also based on tech: a peer-to-peer mental health social app, an interchangeable lens camera with smart connectivity and auto focus, and an app to help people find healthy food options.

Cardenas took home first place and $1,400 for ByteAi, while Tristen Trudgeon won second place and $1,000 for BeSeen, the mental health app. Third place and $600 went to a team of seven students for their pitch to create a community market where homeless people could work. Three other semi-finalists each received $150.

Gelinas said he hopes the Young Innovators Accelerator Pitch Competition will continue to be an annual event. Funding for the program came from GLAEF, the Best Buy Foundation, Annenberg Tech and the Calley Foundation, he said.