Teen Entrepreneur Creates Real-World Summer Business Program for Teens
If you were to ask me who my most successful students are, you’d usually hear me talk about the many accepted to MIT, Harvard or Columbia. Eddy Zhong wasn’t one of these students, but I hold him up as one of the most remarkable examples of success.
Eddy Zhong embodies today’s most successful teenagers. Yet he doesn’t boast perfect grades or test scores, and he was turned down by his top-choice business school. In fact, he’s not even sure he’s ever going to attend college.
So what makes him so remarkable?
Last year, Zhong, now 17, launched his own startup, Blanc, a wearable technology firm. Within a few months, he was featured in Forbes, Wired and on Fox News.
Today, Zhong has cofounded a new project, LeanGap, aimed specifically at high school students with an interest in entrepreneurship. LeanGap is an intensive summer camp that takes high school students from idea to launch in just 6 weeks.
“You’ll finish the program with something tangible to show for it,” one of the cofounders, Tim Peterson, said. “The idea is that the students can come up with their own ideas, rather than what a teacher tells them, andbuild their own visions.”
While there are a number of other entrepreneurial summer programs for high school students out there, LeanGap is the only one, Zhong said, that actually helps students launch their products and get their ideas in front of investors. They see LeanGap as the type of program that can really help students differentiate themselves.
In fact, that’s exactly why Zhong and his cofounders started their program. They are intensely committed to giving high school students the chance to create tangible results from their ideas.
“So many students end up feeling like they can’t contribute anything substantial until they’ve gotten their master’s degree — or at least gone to college,” the third co-founder, Joe Thornton, said.
So the three co-founders set out to change this.
One of the most distinguishing features of LeanGap is the high level of mentorship. Zhong and his team are bringing in a team of Harvard-, Yale-, and MIT-educated investors, developers, engineers, and entrepreneurs.
“We’re really excited about our high-touch approach,” said Thornton. “This isn’t going to be one professor and 100 students crammed into a lecture hall. Our students are going to learn by directly working with entrepreneurs from the startup community.”
By the end of the 6-week program, students will be prepared either to launch their product or pitch their products to investors that LeanGap will bring in.
Zhong’s inspiration came from his own experience. Inspired by his father’s experience with a Silicon Valley start up, Zhong began to dream of building his own business, mostly as an antidote to the boredom he felt in the classroom.
“I was one of those kids who couldn’t stay awake in class,” Zhong said, reflecting on his years as an uninspired high school student. “Nothing I was learning seemed relevant to my real life.”
But when Zhong attended a startup meeting on his 14th birthday, the experience shook him awake.
“I had never seen such dedicated, passionate, or determined individuals in my life,” Zhong said. “People were willing to give up all security in their life to pursue an idea that they believe will change the world and enhance lives.”
Zhong himself is so committed to his path as an entrepreneur that he, too, has given up his own security. Because the demands of running two successful companies require full-time involvement, he has opted to earn his GED rather than to finish his senior year of high school.
“Zhong is emblematic of his generation,” cofounder Thornton said. “He has a passion and a tolerance for doing away with convention that is so admirable.”
Zhong represents the modern definition of a successful teenager — someone out there in the real world, working to inspire other high school students to move beyond the traditional formula of success and topursue their passions.
For more information about LeanGap, please visit www.leangap.com.