By Nicole MOORE

During a three-day program held from March 31 to April 2, the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles partnered with the Boulder, Colorado-based company Techstars to help young women explore entrepreneurship. In the past 10 years Techstars has facilitated nearly 3,000 Startup Weekends for both adults and students in over 150 countries. The event was sponsored by Sony Pictures and Paycom.

The Startup Weekend, held at the Montrose Scout House, welcomed 30 high school aged Girl Scouts from the Los Angeles area. The first night of the event the Girl Scouts learned about business models and how to pitch ideas. During the second day the young women were able to pitch their business ideas and were grouped into six teams, each representing the top pitches. The third and final day included working with mentors, finalizing pitches, and presenting a prototype of products to a panel of high profile judges.  

The mentors for the event were Callie Tepper, a digital designer at Walt Disney Company, Marcelo Calasich, Digital Production manager at Walt Disney Company, Deborah Allison, interaction designer at Disney Parks and Resorts, Tyrone Howard, CEO of the Get Social app, Glen Liu, partner at One LLP, Mina Trujillo, founder of Chraft PR, and Jamie Varon, a Los Angeles-based writer and founder of Shatterboxx.

The Girl Scout Startup Weekend’s judges were Lisa Greer, founder of Media Venture Advisors, Kathryn Nielsen, senior vice president for the theatrical division of Sony Pictures, and Gail Giacobbe, vice president of Product Management at GoDaddy.

During the Girl Scouts’ presentations, each team was allotted five minutes to display their business models, the mockup of their products, and the predicted revenue for their companies. The ideas presented included a revolutionary toothbrush, an app for helping young women with bullying and body image issues, online tutoring for high school students by high school students, an app to find the correct shoe size for customers in various brands, and an online company that refurbishes old clothing. The winning team’s project was called Line Up, an app to play games and take photos for people waiting in line at amusement parks.

Audrey Paransky, a ninth grader from Crescenta Valley High School, participated in the event. Paransky is from Troop 13381 and has been a Girl Scout for the past four years.

“The most fun part [of the weekend] was trying to figure out an idea and then figuring out a problem and solution to fix it,” she said. “I liked working with new people too.”

Paransky would eventually like to go into the medical field but added that the Girl Scout Startup Weekend was “a great opportunity,” saying she might go into business someday.

  Nicole MOORE