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Teen tech teams vie for seed funding

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The excitement was palpable. As each of the shirt-and-tie clad young men walked up to the front of the Frank Salvatori Auditorium at USC to start their presentation, it was obvious that what they were doing was vitally important not only to them, but to the more than 100 family and friends who crowded into to the event to support and cheer them on. In fact, one mom called out “that’s my baby,” when her son’s team was introduced eliciting laughter and a smattering of applause.

The young men, African America and Latino teens ages 13 to 18 years old and most residents of South Los Angeles, were presenting the culmination project of a 15-week summer computer coding academy operated by the program Teens Exploring Technology (TxT). The academy enabled them to create a solution to problems they had encountered in their community.

The participants presented these solutions in the form of potential businesses and the 10 teams that the young men were part of competed against one another to present their technology solutions to a panel of experts in an effort to potentially win funding to launch their business.

Each team was given five minutes to present their solution and two minutes to answer questions from the judges—Una Fox, vice president of enterprise data management at Disney; Kevin Hossman, director of user experience at Rosetta; angel investor Brian Stuart; Sam Brotherton, software engineer at Google; and Kevin Winston, CEO of Los Angeles-based Digital LA.

The student companies ranged from Schoolverce, an application/social media platform focused on increasing the number of high schoolers who attend school events, to a website called Teenployment designed to help young people with no work experience find and apply for jobs in their local area. It also offers tips for interviews, resumes, and cover letters.

The top team would win $2,000 in seed money to help launch their company, a year of mentoring as well as an opportunity to visit three tech firms in Silicon Valley.

That winning team turned out to be BOND, an app created by the team called Incognito.

“We thought BOND was a great idea,” explained judge Winston. “They did their research and the visual presentation was great. Now they’ve just got to build it out.”

BOND is designed to help 14-17 years olds find places to go on dates. The team consisted of Diego Arrenquin, Kevin Herrera and Layquawn Windley all 15, and 16-year-old Jonathan Cassaola.

“We really have bonded,” remarked Windley. “But the first couple of weeks we were really behind; we weren’t communicating and were struggling a lot.” But that changed the longer the teens worked at their goal, added Windley.

“I was so excited, but I didn’t expect to win,” said Arrenquin, after the announcement was made.

Herrera too said he found himself very nervous as the judges announced the third place winner (Groupiee) and then second place, Sumato.

Windley and Cassaola are each looking forward to the next step of expanding their app and building the brand including adding an artificial intelligence component.

TxT founder Oscar Menjivar, who created the program after seeing too many of his friends lost to drugs and crime, says Demo Day is part of a much larger goal of helping the tech industry to start thinking about South Los Angeles when they’re looking for talent for their companies and potential investment opportunities.

To fulfill that dream, the Jordan High graduate, who earned an undergraduate degree in computer science from Cal Poly Pomona and a master’s degree in educational technology from Pepperdine University, has recently opened a hacker center at Adams Boulevard and Catalina Avenue that will act as a place where young men can go after school to learn computer coding and other technology skills.

In addition to the three winners, TxT says several other companies were approached about taking the next step including Teenployment and Squadspot, an application that makes it possible for coaches to digitally manage their teams, plays and players in-game, perhaps via a tablet. Coaches can upload their rosters, and through touchscreen capability draw up plays for their teams in real-time; no more drawing plays in the dirt.

For more information about TxT, visit the website http://exploringtech.org.

While the TxT teams were spending their summer learning computer coding, 18-year-old Dylan Gray got an opportunity to meet President Barack Obama, when the commander-in-chief came to Los Angeles and spoke at Los Angeles Trade Tech College in late July.

Gray, a member of the Social Justice Learning Institute, which works with community youth to achieve change including dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, has been with the organization since he was 16. Among the activities he has been involved in are helping support measure GG in the Inglewood Unified School District; fighting to retain the principal at his high school; battling to restore a program called the Black Male Academy; and helping to design a social media app that focuses on some of the issues that students in urban communities encounter. The meeting with President Obama struck a chord with Gray.

“It was amazing. I remember I was just staring at him, I was so excited and he was so inspirational,” said the young man, who for the first time found himself realizing that the president was much like him—grew up in a household headed by his mother (gray’s parents divorced) and struggling to stay on the right track.

“I thought he came from another rich family; now I can relate to him for real,” said Gray, who admits that he had previously admired the president to a certain extent, but did not know much of his story because he thought the president didn’t care. After listening to the Obama speak, the Cal State Chico-bound freshman now realizes that the two of them have much in common and that, he too, could grow up and become president.

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