Read articles and interviews about Quarter Zero, our Catapult Incubator, and our amazing young entrepreneurs.
"That changed this summer after the boys participated in Catapult, a highly competitive and selective incubator for high school entrepreneurs. In addition to New York, where Catapult is based, the incubator brought Lace-Up's founders to Chicago and San Francisco, giving them access to advisers from Google, McKinsey & Co., and Microsoft Reactor, among other business notables - and subjecting them to critiques."
These high schoolers turned a desire to look cool into a business →
"Bharat Pulgam got an initial push as part of Catapult, an incubator program for budding high school entrepreneurs. A junior at Wayzata High School, he and his team have created modular earbuds with pieces that can be unhooked and replaced if damaged, so users don’t have to buy entirely new earbuds. His recent Kickstarter campaign passed it's goal of $25,000."
"Entrepreneurship is a growing field for teens. Young people are searching for something that isn’t traditionally supplied by schools. Because of this great need, many opportunities have sprung up all around the United States (and world). These range from in-school classes to after-school workshops and from programs lasting a couple of hours to a few months. Some focus on teaching concepts and theory, while others try to help you launch a real company. There is a lot out there, and a young person with entrepreneurial potential needs to carefully examine which program will be best."
10 Must-Haves in the Best Summer Entrepreneurship Programs →
“[Mackenzie] Berry’s talent of cultivating resources and skills for a future goal set in motion from that moment...As a junior, she applied as a free agent for a young entrepreneurial organization called the Catapult Incubator at the University of Pennsylvania, where she flew multiple times over the course of one year to learn entrepreneurial skills.
“After MIT Launch, I decided I wanted to continue with the idea I had developed, so I participated in Catapult Ideas — an incubator for high school startups, which helped hone my startup idea, then called TacBoard, into an actionable and monetizable business...I won Catapult’s Demo Day and placed 5th out of 70 other startups at DraperU’s Demo Day so that validation really strengthened my resolve to take time and not go to college.”
"All our teammates came together through Catapult, an esteemed entrepreneurship incubator in the U.S. that gives aspiring young entrepreneurs across the nation the tools and resources they need to develop and scale their businesses. I entered Catapult as a Founder with the idea of Teo Foods...we benefited from the mentorship of Catapult’s incubator program. Through Catapult, we received mentorships with corporate leaders and top graduate students and access to thought-leaders in the technology, venture capital, and social entrepreneurship spaces."
TeoFoods teen entrepreneurs on a mission to reduce food waste→
“As the excitement slowly started to dwindle down after [MIT] Launch, my team looked for something more structured that we could do to further our business. YCombinator? Another Accelerator? Business competitions? Eventually we stumbled upon Catapult; a business incubator for startups with a location in Boston....This was a huge deal for us because it was what we needed to keep the fire going. Putting our team back into a program with structure where we could all meet and work together was exactly what helped us propel our efforts.”
“I’ve learned so much about resilience from these students. They come in to the program with such strong convictions about their solution to some problem without fully understanding what the problem really is. After the first session of diving deep into this problem, oftentimes they find out that their solution isn’t the right or best one. Their ability to bounce back after this perceived defeat with the same amount of energy, if not more, than older people facing the same situation is astounding.”
The New Guard: Joshua Caleb Collins grooms new entrepreneurs→
“Volunteering for verynice and Catapult to help high school entrepreneurs was a great experience. Giving back to young people that are motivated to turn their ideas into reality is inspiring. I enjoyed designing a logo for a company...that has a good global cause at its foundation. It was more of a reason to volunteer for the project. I treated them as clients and listened to their branding needs. In our conference calls, they worked together to give professional and constructive feedback that made working with them a joy. It was a collaborative effort to come up with the logo and the different variations of it. I do have to say they were one of my best clients. I know whatever their next venture is, that it will be a success.”
Josh Collins, founder of Catapult, added there are Chicago-area students on almost every team, something that reflects [University of Chicago] Booth's commitment to be sure this program benefitted teen entrepreneurship in the city...Collins is quick to point out the program has a purpose outside incubating startups. "We can not only help them get their start up off the ground, we can help them learn some really important life lessons," he explained. "We use entrepreneurship as a vehicle to teach fundamental core problems around leadership and technical skills.””
This incubator for teens shows off Chicago’s high school entrepreneurs→