The Innovation Academy: Furman’s launchpad for high school entrepreneurs

Sixty seconds. That’s all the time eight rising sophomores and juniors from the private Mount Vernon School in Atlanta had to pitch their innovative business startups. 

They were the inaugural class of the Innovation Academy, a new program by Furman University’s Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. From June 9 through 13, these students immersed themselves in the real-world task of developing a startup company. By the end of the week they pitched their idea to a panel of industry experts and one of the country’s top angel investment groups. 

“This is 100% experience-based learning,” said Hill Institute Executive Director Bryan Davis. “We’re connecting high school students with unique partners and opportunities.” 

Investing in the future 

The Innovation Academy allows The Hill Institute to offer the expertise and resources of its staff to tag team with high schools that offer an entrepreneurial track. 

Eric Cooperman smiles while welcoming some of the Mount Vernon School students back to Furman 101 on June 9. Photo by Owen Withycombe, Furman University.

“It’s a partnership with select schools to bring in their students over the summer and accelerate the areas they just don’t have time to work on throughout the year,” said Eric Cooperman, senior director of entrepreneurship programs for The Hill Institute. 

Cooperman paired with The Mount Vernon School in Atlanta, which has an innovation diploma program offering a four-year, project-based education in innovative thinking and problem solving. When Cooperman went to speak to the class on the topic of design thinking, a solution-based approach to innovation. The staff were blown away by his knowledge and enthusiasm, said Krista Fancher, innovation diploma program director at the school.  

When Cooperman brought up a desire to build an innovation summer camp, Fancher was happy to have her program serve as the pilot and to collaborate in designing the curriculum. They spent weeks ahead of the camp researching and designing graphical elements for the program, working with Cooperman the whole time. 

“This was such a serendipitous partnership,” Fancher said. “It was really what my students needed – someone who believed in them. I didn’t have to motivate them at all. When I would walk into the room they were already having their standup meetings.” 

She said she never could have imagined how that initial partnership would grow into the Innovation Academy. 

Developing an entrepreneurial mindset 

Every business starts somewhere, and on the Innovation Academy’s first day these young entrepreneurs started by presenting one-minute pitches. 

Brett Owen, head of incubation at the Michelin Innovation Lab, offers feedback on June 13 to a student who pitched their business idea as part of the weeklong Innovation Academy hosted by Furman’s Hill Institute. Photo by Owen Withycombe, Furman University.

“More time doesn’t make a bad idea any better,” said Philippe Barreaud, director of the Michelin Innovation Lab North America and a partner in the Innovation Academy. 

The students came prepared. Working in pairs, they brainstormed their business ideas weeks earlier in preparation for their week in Greenville. Barreaud and his team gave them their first chance to pitch their startups: an online shopping tool to search for products using custom preferences, an app to connect young athletes with coaches and mentors, a mental health and productivity app to help teens structure their lives and a nonmedical home care website for booking local caregivers. 

After each 60-second pitch, the audience offered private feedback on sticky notes – the first round of mentors helping hone these business concepts into a “minimum viable product” by the end of the week.  Along the way, students connected with influential professionals, trading business cards with everyone they met. 

“It’s important to share some of what we’ve learned with the next generation, and it’s rare to connect with such an engaged group of young people,” said Brett Owen, head of incubation at the Innovation Lab. 

Students gleaned key business insights from phone interviews with prospective customers, arranged by the Michelin team. 

When Siena Tiffin, 16, and Sujaan Agravat, 14, shared their idea of paying a-la-carte for nonmedical home care services through an app connecting families with local professional caregivers, one of their potential customers asked to make their hometown the first test market. 

“That’s when I knew this could really be something,” Tiffin said. Agravat nodded and said, “I loved getting that feedback, it was reassurance that there’s a real chance this business could be developed.” 

Engaged learning, immersive lessons 

Toward the end of the Innovation Academy’s first day, the Mount Vernon students were tossed into the deep end. They’d pitched their businesses to the receptive crew at Michelin, next they would pitch to strangers. 

Oliver Membrillo, a student at the Mount Vernon School in Atlanta, chats with a woman outside of Furman 101 during an exercise to ask strangers to invest $1 in their business ideas as part of the Hill Institute’s Innovation Academy on June 9. Photo by Owen Withycombe, Furman University.

With little prep time, he had the students ask people enjoying their afternoons in downtown Greenville if they’d be willing to invest $1 in these student startups. 

“Quick ‘noes’ are as valuable as ‘yeses.’ Stagnation kills,” said Steve Johnson, program manager for the South Carolina Research Authority, who served as a mentor for the day. 

Commuters and shoppers alike brushed the students off when they tried to explain their business ideas, and the fledgling founders learned quickly they could get more money by explaining they were students working on a project and they needed help. That was the lesson. 

“It’s not about your product, it’s about who you are and how you make people feel,” Cooperman said. “This is one of the pillars of the Hill Institute. It’s about putting our founders in situations where they are physically learning in an environment that seems uncaged.” 

From the dorm room to the board room 

For the rest of the week, students embraced the challenge of turning their ideas into fully-fledged business concepts.  

One day they visited consulting firm Ernst & Young and learned about market and competitor analysis, pricing strategies and revenue models. The next day they worked with local attorneys to understand the different legal structures their businesses could take and how to navigate regulatory compliance questions. Professionals with marketing and brand strategy firm Wonder shaped their businesses’ stories, and at production company 9/8 Central the students filmed high-quality commercials. 

As the saying goes: Work hard, play hard. The students enjoyed a pool party at the university president’s home. In their residence hall they held evening ping pong matches that often led to late-night heart-to-heart conversations. 

“We really wanted to push them to dig deep and find their personal brand,” Cooperman said. “It’s not just these experiences and what you’re learning about business, but what you’re learning about yourself.” 

Pitch-perfect ventures 

On their last day, the Innovation Academy class honed their pitches, poring over their notes and scripts, tweaking their language and slideshow presentations until the very last minute with help from local venture capital leaders. The students’ families, friends and some of the mentors they met along the way came to watch them present their ideas to professionals from leading angel investment firm VentureSouth.  

Siena Tiffin, a rising junior at the Mount Vernon School in Atlanta, speaks with a mentor about her business idea during the Hill Institute’s Innovation Academy while at Furman 101 on June 9. Photo by Owen Withycombe, Furman University.

“To see my son not only utilize the skills he has but stretch himself to experience new things is beyond exciting,” said Alesha Frazier, mother of rising high school sophomore Nehemiah Woodfolk, 14. 

Their final presentations were a far cry from the hurried, conceptual 60-second pitches they gave at Michelin four days earlier. Each team opened their pitch by showing off their professional, studio-produced commercials before explaining their business models, monetization strategies, growth trajectories and analyses of their market competitors. They spoke with confidence and poise, pushing through their nerves to deliver their carefully crafted business plans. Feedback from VentureSouth’s co-founders Matt Dunbar, Paul Clark and Charlie Banks gave them insights they’ll carry forward, wherever their ambitions take them. 

“We’ve put so much work into this and spent longer than this week alone, so seeing our hard work pay off today was amazing,” said Tiffin. 

Parents beamed with pride. All week Cooperman had been texting them photos of their children’s activities, but seeing the future generation of innovators in their element was something else entirely, said Susan Foster, mother of 17-year-old Christian Foster. 

“As a parent, watching your child go through something challenging and seeing them take it on with such courage, I just felt very proud,” she said.