In early 2008, Karen Gillie, who teaches entrepreneurship in Fort Wayne Community Schools, said she had a high school student who wanted to job shadow me.  His name was Zach Zuber, and she felt I should meet him because he had a little extra something.

As Karen said, she purposely gives assignments at which many students will likely fail, to stretch them out of their comfort zones.  Earlier, she had asked Zach and his classmates to identify and contact a local CEO and arrange a meeting.  She didn’t expect that too many would actually have the guts to do it.  Zach not only arranged the meeting, but walked out of it with an internship!

We met.  He became a member of NIIC’s (where I worked at the time) first BizWiz student entrepreneur group, and started one of the two first ventures in NIIC’s Student Venture Lab.  In the Student Venture Lab, he was the “business guy” who focused on planning a business venture.  His business plan for Bee Mobile (a text message marketing service) won a local competition.

Zach Zuber in his office in the NIIC Student Venture Lab
after winning a business plan competition (the real reward was some cash).

He was not, admittedly, the technical guy.  He was pretty clearly the opposite of a technical founder.  He couldn’t program or design – so he had to contract with and depend on others to create his online presence.  I’m pretty sure that he drove himself nuts trying to make that happen on the small budget he had available from Student Venture Lab and competition grants.  Shortly thereafter, he moved to Muncie, IN to attend Ball State University and got hooked up with an incubator there.

In Muncie, he launched the Bee Mobile beta, cold called like a boss, and signed up multiple beta customers.  Things were looking good.  But after a month of operation he found out that the customer validation failed.  Customers loved the service – they just didn’t like paying for it!  Ruh-Roh.

So Zach closed Bee Mobile and started looking for something new.  He stayed in touch with us at NIIC, stopping back to the BizWiz meetups and visiting the Fort Wayne startup folks.

At BizWiz making a video blog post of doing cupcakes “manbites” with Ray Angel, Presenting at a Student Venture Lab Funders Luncheon,
With Scott BonAmi & Graham Bredemeyer of Sassi Systems and me to hear Steve Blank.

Along the way, he hooked up with a group of mainly NIIC student entrepreneurs who went down to Indianapolis and won the Spring 2011 Indy Startup Weekend with a venture called GrabaChat (chat roulette without the penises).

The GrabaChat team after winning the Indy Startup Weekend

Zach had the opportunity to meet Zack Klein when Zach came to speak at the TechFest event in 2011 (where Zuber was helping me out at the NIIC Student Venture Lab table).  Being the <sarcasm> shy, reserved sort of guy that he is </sarcasm>, Zuber took the opportunity to cold-pitch Klein about GrabaChat (and got some valuable feedback).

Zach Klein and Zach Zuber at TechFest

As with many Startup Weekend ventures, the group did not persist, but Zach took a pivot of the concept forward with brand new intellectual property (I saw the new concept – it was sweet), paired with a technical cofounder.  Zach eventually put GrabaChat aside when the technical cofounder decided to leave town and get a J.O.B.   He went off to Bloomington to intern with Sproutbox, spent some time around Indianapolis interning with BizProps, and then one day …

I heard something completely new from Zach.  He was going to become a developer!

He was going to Chicago to learn Ruby on Rails in the Starter League‘s 11-week web development crash course.  He would be living and breathing code for three months.

We’d had discussions about learning coding over the 4+ years since we met – practically every time that he needed to hire someone to develop something for him.  Zach had heard me say more than once that if you take 2 years to study and practice (on your own), you can become very proficient with a language.  In fact, he had been dabbling with customizing the PHP of some WordPress templates, had done some online PHP, HTML, and CSS tutorials, and had mocked up a few websites with HTML and CSS.

But, this was different.  This was all-in, invest lots of your time and money, don’t turn back, serious stuff.  The business guy was transforming into a technical guy.

Fast forward to today.  The Starter League is behind him.  Before the week is out Zach will be leaving for Chicago where he has accepted a position as the technical co-founder of BeNoticed, a startup that plans to “Make finding a job easier for people who aren’t ideal candidates on paper, but are indeed skilled at what they do.”  His partner is a business guy.  The tables have turned a full 180 degrees.

Zach Zuber at Founders studying Ruby before leaving for Chicago

This is a fun story to write – and (i hope) to read.  I’d like to get serious for a moment, and point out two admirable startup entrepreneur traits that we can learn from Zach.

First, through four-plus years, he has stuck to his guns, not given up, and persevered through two failed ventures (and plenty more killed ideas).  He kept looking for ventures and venture ideas.  He kept trying ventures and venture ideas.  He stayed active in the startup communities throughout Indiana – and then Chicago.  His willingness to tough it out, close out the ventures that didn’t work, and keep going is probably the same extra something that Karen Gillie saw in Zach when she first introduced me.

Second, if you ask him Zach will probably say it should have happened earlier, that it took him a long time to make the decision, but he made the scary decision to go all in and learn to code – to become the dev that his ventures always needed.  And then he did it!  The main roadblock that his earlier ventures faced is now gone.  Sure, he’s new as a dev, but can you imagine how he’ll grow with his persistent personality?  I can.

Congratulations, Zach, on getting technical!

It was the day after perhaps the worst thunderstorm to hit (and I mean “hit”) Fort Wayne in years.  Trees uprooted everywhere.  Literally half of Fort Wayne had no power.  The Lotus Gallery had no power.  But it DID have the OFabz Summer Swimwear Tour! The Launch of OFabz 2012 Women’s Swim Collection!  Ya gotta love OFabz!

The pop-up shop had popped up.  Far out.

The tables were decorated with dinosaurs (dinosaurs??) and flowers.  Heavy.

Friends and customers were arriving and buying brand new, never before seen, new to the world OFabz swimwear.  Groovy.

I was flashing back to the sixties (love, tie-dyes, flowers in your hair).  Peace, brothers and sisters.

Later in the evening, the psychedelic rock  band, Heaven’s Gateway Drugs will play.  Oh wow, man.

Congratulations, Olivia!

Update:

Went back for the evening event.  Really sorry I had to leave before the band was on, but here are some pics.  Power’s back on, lots of people there!  Check ‘em out.

You’ll laugh at the promo video, maybe even sneeze a little soda out of your nose if you’re not careful.

But you’ll love the idea.  Code Club, a UK non-profit, wants to marshall great bunches of teachers to teach young kids 10-11 years old or so how to code.

It reminds me of what Honor Education was doing in their Tech Academy on a smaller, for-profit scale.   The excitement around their classes was always absolutely high – it was infectious.  When I hear what Code Club wants to do, I can see that excitement again – only much, much stronger.

What do you think, Fort Wayne?  Should we put together our own version right here?

What kind of person is best equipped to teach entrepreneurship?  That’s easy.  Someone who is a successful entrepreneur.

That describes Dustin Walls of Carroll High School.  Dustin has owned and operated a commercial cleaning business for 25 years while teaching entrepreneurship, the academy of finance, economics, and various other business courses for 10 years at Carroll.

In the classroom he is thoughtful and innovative.  When he and I collaborated some time ago to present a JA business plan program in his entrepreneurship class we followed JA’s curriculum outline, but we created and presented our own materials and exercises.

He founded Carroll’s student-run “school store”, Charger Corner.  Dustin secured a $8,500 grant for startup funds, and the store started by selling cappuccino, coffee, snacks, and school supplies.  Since then students have expanded Charger Corner, adding such products as water bottles and the PE uniforms that every student needs.

Dustin has brought students to the Innovation Center’s Youth Entrepreneurship Symposium for years.  At the most recent event, he won the “award” for bringing the most students –  38!  By the way, last year that award went to Riley Johnson of New Tech Academy.

Do his students like what he does?  I think this photo tells the story.  Yes, Dustin, I know I said that I wouldn’t publish this one, but it tells your story:  you make a difference that your students enjoy and value!

Keep up the great work, Dustin!

A couple of months ago I was invited to speak to the kickoff event of a great project at Churubusco Middle School.  Each and every 8th grade student would be creating a business plan.  Is that cool or what?

They teamed up in groups of 4, had a very detailed model to follow, were coached by 2 great teachers, Jennifer Galloway and Vanessa Wyss.

Two weekends ago I went back to Churubusco to see the final results and talk to some of the students about their achievements.  I’ll tell you readers what I’ve been telling everyone since then.  Instead of “school projects”, I saw some products that could be selling right now on their own websites or at marketplaces like Etsy.

First, there was Julia Folland’s team, the first one I saw when I walked in the door.  They created a pen and pencil holder that velcros to a belt loop.  What a great idea.  Simple, useful for a student – the target market was clear.  Extensible – I couldn’t help think that by downsizing it just a little, they’ve got a cell phone carrier.  I saw the fabrics they had chosen and immediately thought “etsy.com”.

CrazyHeads made a headband that you could customize by buying and then snapping in a variety of decorations.  Great idea.  Hello, etsy.com.

Check out Alec Nash’s team’s product, the Arm Pillow, a pillow with a sleeve.  Perfect for curling up on the floor in front of the TV (Alec wasn’t shy about demoing the product) – or just grabbing a nap.  I can see this selling now (and can remember being that guy on the floor watching TV when I was young).

Up until now, I had seen products that could be sold (today!) on etsy.com.  Next came a group that had an entirely different market for their creative product.

Donovan Geiger, Cody Reister, and their team made a product to solve a problem that millions of people experience every day.  You leave the grocery store carrying several bags by those handles that bite into your hands whenever the bags have a little weight (and they always have a little weight).  Their team created a carrier that comfortably fits your hand.

This last product I’d like to bring to the attention of my pencil aficionado friend, Andy Welfle, and to all of the engineers in the room.  Alta Kensill and Tristan Creech (and team) created a pencil dispenser.

It works like the straw dispensers you see at restaurants, but with a different mechanical mechanism.  Pencils sit in the hopper, and when you twirl a dowel with a pencil-length notch cut in it, one falls into the notch and, voila, out comes a fresh pencil.

So, congrats to a pair of great teachers.  They stuck their necks out a bit to propose an ambitious program, and then they hit a huge home run.  Now the entire 8th grade class at Churubusco has been infected with the entrepreneurship bug.

Way to go Jennifer and Vanessa!