Youth Startup Experience

The two-week Youth Startup Experience is a crash course designed to immerse students in entrepreneurship and design thinking. The program runs from Monday to Thursday with two-hour daily sessions that include lectures, workshops, and group activities.

The course begins with an introduction to the core concepts of entrepreneurship and the five stages of design thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. The initial sessions focus on developing empathy for users through research techniques like interviews, observation, and survey design. Students then synthesize this research to define a clear and actionable problem statement, create detailed user personas, and validate their problem. This is followed by intensive brainstorming sessions using methods like SCAMPER and mind mapping to generate creative solutions.

In the second half of the course, participants turn their ideas into tangible products. They learn to build both physical and digital prototypes and test them with users to gather feedback for refinement. The focus then shifts to business fundamentals, teaching students how to craft a complete business model using the Business Model Canvas. This includes defining a unique value proposition, exploring revenue models, and analyzing cost structures. The program culminates in a final session on how to pitch an idea effectively, covering storytelling, presentation design, and understanding investors.