Youth Tech Program Helps Santa Monica Students Launch Five Startups

August 14, 2017 9:48 AM
by Gary Carter

Out of thousands of high school students in the City of Santa Monica, 30 students were selected to participate in this year’s six week Youth Tech Program. Students learned from City instructors, Silicon Beach startups, and established tech firms including FINIEN, DTE Media, Lionsgate Entertainment and the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Topics covered included coding, UI/UX, branding, big data, gigabit networks, entrepreneurship, collaboration, virtual servers, cloud storage, public safety, and real-time transit data.

The 2017 program launched five civic-oriented startups including:

Tsunimby: A social activism company that provides users with information about events of their interests to encourage civic engagement by improving accessibility to volunteering, donating, and advocacy opportunities. 

Cart Savy: A meal planning service that creates custom recipes from the users’ grocery items that align with the users’ dietary goals. 

Inspoeta: A social media platform geared towards poetry writers and enthusiasts that allows them to save and share their work, as well as receive feedback via comments. 

PolyBoxy: A digital and physical subscription box service that contains professionally curated items pertaining to a specific culture or topic. 

ResidenTours: A service providing personalized tours given by locals to travelers of a particular destination utilizing a user and employer compatibility feature.

On “Pitch Night”, the culmination program event, students pitched their startups to a panel of judges, investors, family members and over 150 attendees. After a lengthy deliberation, the judge panel deemed Team Inspoeta as the winner! Shortly after pitch night, each team delivered their impressive pitches to the CEO of Science Inc., Mike Jones.

Congratulations to our amazing high school students for helping to make Santa Monica a better place. Please look out for next year’s Youth Tech Program online application opening on January 1, 2018 at santa monica youth tech

Authored By

Gary Carter
Community Broadband Manager