The Spirit of Innovation Awards not only challenges teams of high school students to create products using science and technology to solve the grand challenges of the 21st century, it also opens doors to awesome adventures.
What is it like to be a high school student and an entrepreneur and to pitch your product to venture capitalists (VCs) and get a photo op at the White House all in one week? Ask Mikayla Diesch and Shannon Diesch. They will tell you, “It rocks!”
After the photo op and running into the MythBusters (photo at right) at the White House, they hopped into their car with their folks and drove 20 hours to Council Bluffs, Iowa to a VC event to pitch their nutrition bar concept, the Solar Flare, to VCs and investors. And yes, they were the ONLY students pitching, and yes, they got interest from some investors.
They are currently working on setting up a legal structure for their company, hiring people to help and scheduling the Zero G flight they won when they received The People’s Choice Award at the Innovation Summit at NASA Ames. Their next dreams: get their company funded, make lots and lots of Solar Flare bars, expand the product line and go to Harvard. Of course they will!
To learn more about the Solar Flare Bar, visit the Conrad Awards website.
Photo courtesy of Nancy Conrad.