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Our Story
The Idea Launchpad was founded in 2014 by Anne Gold, Tampa Bay Educator to encourage young people with an entrepreneurial mindset to ideate, explore, innovate, and even launch their own businesses. According to Anne, who has a passion for entrepreneurship and the learning opportunities it provides,“entrepreneurial endeavors give students new outlets to express creative passions, build self-esteem, and feel an increased sense of control over their lives.” Given two options - "do it" or think about it - kids will almost always go for the first."
Since 2014 the Idea Launchpad has provided a range of design thinking workshop opportunities for over 1000 motivated and curious Tampa Bay students including:
Just-Do It: Prototyping Party
Launch a Business
Create A Tee Shirt Business
Innovation Field Trips
Willy Wonka Entrepreneurship Workshop
POP: Paper Prototyping turns ideas into a mobile app
Idea Launch one-day student startup competition
And, the one that launched it all in September 2014:
Startup Weekend for Youth Entrepreneurs powered by Google.
Anne and 10 students traveled to the Regional Competition for this Startup Weekend sponsored by Google. Friday night began with pitches from almost every one of the 50 students in attendance. Only ten team ideas were selected, and four of the teams were built around the pitches from our ten kids! In less than 54 hours they formed ideas for a product. They named it, designed it, did market research and then created logos, prototypes, business plans and websites. Sunday concluded with presentations to judges as the kids showcased their new business start-up plans to parent, community members and the panel of judges
Timeline
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