This summer, three teams of high school students conceived and developed a business idea — eventually pitching their idea to total strangers.

It was all part of the six-week High School Entrepreneurship Bootcamp in CSUN’s David Nazarian College of Business and Economics, which teaches high schoolers to think like entrepreneurs. 

On July 30, the teams pitched their ideas to program supporters who could invest fake $100 bills to the ideas they deemed promising. The team that collected the most fake money was declared the winner. 

That winner was Glow on a Budget, from a team of seniors-to-be from Birmingham Community Charter High School. It’s an app that helps users find affordable alternatives to luxury beauty products personalized to their skin and hair type. 

The three Glow on a Budget co-founders — Jazmin Asencio, Jade Hernandez and Paolo Rodriguez — praised the mentorship they received and said practicing the pitches helped them overcome their fears. 

“That kind of got us out of our comfort zone throughout the weeks, and that really helped,” Rodriguez said. 

This is the second year of the bootcamp, which is led by Anna Manzo Vides ’18 (Kinesiology Sports Studies). The bootcamp is a program of the Nazarian College’s Center for Social and Technology Entrepreneurship. 

The center currently supports students in developing their entrepreneurial ventures through the Jeff Marine Bull Ring pitch competition, the Summer Accelerator, the I-Corps customer discovery program, Entrepreneurship Speaker Series, and Fast Pitch Competition, among other activities. The center is led by Executive Director Joanne Scillitoe, who is CSUN’s Paul Jennings Chair in Entrepreneurship. 

The bootcamp has been largely donor-funded, primarily through general gifts to the college. This year’s camp — and upcoming iterations — were boosted by a pledge from retired travel entrepreneur Andrea L. McClure-Mysza ’83 (Marketing) and her husband, former industrial supplies/packaging business owner Dave Mysza. 

The bootcamp is modeled on CSUN’s ENT 101, the Nazarian College’s Exploring Entrepreneurship course. ENT 101 introduces business concepts while walking students through the process of developing a business idea. The class is open to all students on campus.

The high school boot camp brings the same structure for a six-week camp for students from around Los Angeles (all of this year’s participants attend either Birmingham or Granada Hills Charter High School; Vides said the program continues to expand its recruiting range). During the camp, students are encouraged to find business opportunities, develop solutions; undergo customer discovery; develop prototypes of apps, websites or products; and create a one-page assessment called a business model canvas. 

Glow on a Budget was in competition with two other promising ideas:  

• Orbit, an interactive app that helps students track money, gifts and volunteer hours while unlocking badges for milestones. 
• Mind Frame, a mindfulness app designed to support students during study sessions and reduce stress, with special attention paid to features helpful to neurodivergent individuals. 

During the final event, the participants heard from speakers including alumnus Victor Villa ’15 (Management), founder of Villa’s Tacos; Scillitoe; and Chandra Subramaniam, dean of the Nazarian College.

“Part of the reason why we started the summer program … was primarily to bring in high school students very early in their career, interested in entrepreneurship, thinking about what does it mean to go and create something new that’s not been done before,” Subramaniam said. 

Addressing the participants directly at the pitch showcase, Subramaniam said: “To be an entrepreneur requires dedication. You need the skills to do it, but you need the dedication and the effort to be put in, in order to make something successful.”

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