Okta Hosts Oakland BUILD Students for Investor Pitch Competition!
On Wednesday, March 19th, BUILD partner Okta hosted fifty-nine 10th graders from Oakland, California’s Aspire Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy at their global headquarters in downtown San Francisco for an Investor Pitch event! Student business teams pitched their businesses to Okta employees, “investors”, who determined how much (and if) they would receive funding.
The entire 10th grade class at Lionel Wilson is enrolled in BUILD through Lionel’s Engineering Pathway Design for Social Change. Students formed their business teams at the start of the school year, learning and utilizing design thinking skills to create their business plans. A key piece of the programming is learning the Autodesk software Fusion360 – this allows them to 3D print key pieces of their prototypes, cutting down on their cost of goods sold. That meant Lionel students came to Okta with complete minimum viable products in addition to their memorized pitches and enthusiasm!
We couldn’t have hosted this great event without the generous support of Okta. They have supported BUILD in multiple roles; as financial backers, event and job shadow hosts, and as business team coaches through our partnership with Year-Up. We are grateful to our long-standing Associate Board Member, Catherine Lee, Staff Infrastructure Engineer, at Okta and the many wonderful volunteers that offered their time to be with our students.
“It was fun and a nice experience to share our product idea with other adults, show them how our product works, what it includes and why we decided to come up with this particular product.” Maddie, 10th grade student.
“It’s cool, you get to think about the many problems that the world has today and spend time trying to find a solution for that. Who knows – ideas can become good solutions.” Xavier, 10th grade student
