Pitch Night: Where Innovation Meets Opportunity

With stage lights beaming down, a group of five teens wearing matching green T-shirts and wide-leg denim jeans stood shoulder to shoulder. Facing them was a panel of judges ready to ask tough questions about the students’ business proposal for an innovative portable barbecue smoker, including everything from its design to a marketing plan.

This event wasn’t Shark Tank but Pitch Night at Vista Ridge High School in Leander ISD, where entrepreneurial students have the unique opportunity to take part in a business program known as INCubator that could lead to seed funding for the very best idea.

“My favorite part of INCubator is definitely learning the fundamentals of starting a business,” said Vista Ridge High School student Bryce Rogers, whose team pitched their smoker under the company name of Bear Box. “That’s something you don’t get to learn every day.”

Learning about entrepreneurship is a key goal of the INCubator program, which first began in Leander ISD in 2017 at Vista Ridge High School before expanding to Vandegrift High School in 2018. The INCubator class, which has been thriving ever since, is part of a larger curriculum called Uncharted Learning that also offers opportunities at the district’s elementary and middle schools. This past school year, 272 students at Vista Ridge and Vandergrift participated in the INCubator program. There also were 557 middle school students in the mxICUedu program and 1,078 elementary school students in the freshINCedu.

This learning opportunity is fund­ed in part by the Leander Educational Excellence Foundation, which provides $25,000 in annual funding to support the program, including the capstone project, which culminates in the Pitch Night competition.

As part of the curriculum, the pro­gram draws on area business experts and entrepreneurs who provide mentoring and coaching to students throughout the year on topics that range from public speaking to finance and marketing.

“Seeing the students’ growth, from tentative steps to confident strides, is a privilege that continually inspires and invigorates,” said Bob Blomquist, who has decades of business experience, serves as a board member for the Vista Ridge High School INCubator program, and is a coach for INCubator student groups. “It truly gives me hope for the future.”

The program already has had its suc­cesses, including student Morgan Maguire, a TikTok star who completed the INCubator class this year and plans to pursue a career in marketing.

“This class is very different compared to what else is offered,” she said. “It’s hands on and it’s about creating something. We create a real business; it’s not simulated.”

Students in INCubator begin the school year by forming teams and creating business models. The teams then present their business models to mentor volunteers in a round-robin format, asking questions and seeking advice. Each team is matched with a mentor to support the team for the remainder of the school year. Throughout the year, local entrepreneurs teach classes.

For some students, the program is a natural next step in their business elective track, while for others, it’s a chance to try something completely new.

Students who successfully complete INCubator move on to the ACCELeratoredu class in their senior year to take the first steps toward making their dreams a reality. Many begin to fundraise, develop technologies, and file LLCs.

Businesses created in the two-year program do go on to succeed in the real world. For example, Gazelle is a recent startup that helps landowners in Africa lease their land to solar companies to harvest solar energy.

“I love that by not being afraid of the paperwork and technicalities, I teach them to think big and think of ways to change the world,” said Dana Jones, who retired in May after teaching the marketing, INCubator, and ACCELeratoredu programs at Vista Ridge High School.

“Our goal is to educate students on the process of launching a startup and many, many, many students have gone on to start other startup businesses. We take them through the entire process, in a real-world environment, and they aren’t afraid to repeat the process,” Jones said.

The culmination of the program is Pitch Night, where only five of the 14 INCubator teams were selected to participate.

On this particular May evening, the stakes were high for the students taking part in this capstone event.

Whoever won would advance to the ACCELeratoredu program and secure a starting round of funding to launch their idea out into the world. The recognition can also help them obtain more investors. Those who don’t win the funding often turn to GoFundMe to launch their busi­nesses.

For Rogers and his Bear Box team, the pitch went well, and it didn’t hurt that the students were able to offer the judges a taste of barbecue.

But the competition was stiff, and in the end, a different team of students took home the coveted seed money, thanks to their work developing a new fashion app aptly titled WearABLE, which uses AI and social connections to help users decide what to wear each day.

Next school year, the WearABLE group will have the opportunity to further develop their plan in the ACCELeratoredu class, which serves as a launching pad for businesses that begin in the INCubator program. ACCELeratoredu gave recent graduates Saniya Oak and Sydney Ross the guidance and connections they needed to co-found a nonprofit in their senior year, which they plan to continue working on in college.

“It was really helpful that it was more experience-based and interactive because business is one of those things you can learn about on paper, but it’s better to do in practice,” Oak said.