Young Entrepreneurs + gSchool = Lots of Wins

The gSchool students and all the youth business owners gather after successful presentations.

A few weeks ago we let you know about a great collaboration in the works between the young entrepreneurs of Young Americans and the coding students at Galvanize’s gSchool.  On Monday, June 3, the final projects were unveiled to great delight!

Bringing the pieces together

At Galvanize, there are 25 students who are going through a six-month program that teaches them to code and create websites.  These gSchool students are currently about halfway through their experience.

Young Americans has many young entrepreneurs who are just getting started with their product sales, or would like to begin selling their products online to scale their businesses.

We brought these two groups together to collaborate eight weeks ago.  The gSchool students worked with the young entrepreneurs to define website needs, and then built simple-to-use websites for the fledgling businesses.  The results have been phenomenal.

The results in action

Here are the finished website results from all the partnerships.  Please check them out!

• TR’s Treasures
• Petals, Purses and Pastries
• Rue Jewels
• Wild Wood Pens
• Heavenly Mountain
• Sweet Bee Sisters
• ZARL Inc.
• Color My Bracelets
• Crafty Hands
• Emaune’ Design

Then, watch two of the presentations below.  One is from ZARL, Inc, whose owners are now able to sell their single and trident rocket launchers online.  The other is from Jake Cohen, the owner of Color My Bracelets, who is blind, but is now able to fulfill paracord bracelet orders since his website can read to him the updates and orders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjDjjLOkhek&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4ZcEH5g8aM&feature=youtu.be

Great response

Here are a few of the comments we received from participants in this initiative:

“It really isn’t as hard as we thought to create something online. We learned that technology isn’t scary.” – Sweet Bee Sisters

“Yes, because it is a great opportunity to work with future professional web designers.”

“It is a really great way to really step up a business.” – ZARL Inc.

“I have learned how to effectively communicate what I want for my business and how to collaborate with people to make one product and allow it to be seamless.” – Emaune Design

A well-made match

We couldn’t be more excited about this partnership and the results!

After just a few weeks, the young entrepreneurs have come to think of their gSchool pairs as “mentors”.  The gSchool students have been supportive of the young business owners through product purchases and verbal support, in addition to the website designs.  The young entrepreneurs have learned how to navigate the back-end of their new websites so they can make updates and additions themselves.  Many of the websites have already launched, and they were just revealed on Monday.

We hope to continue this collaboration when the next set of gSchool students starts their training.  If you know of a young business owner needing a website, let us know in the comments section below.  We would love to include them in this great initiative!