Search for teen entrepreneurs and you’ll find the same handful of names on every list: the famous founders who started young and became household names. Their stories are worth knowing. They’re also a long way from where most high school students are starting.
This guide is different. Every teen entrepreneur here entered the Blue Ocean Student Entrepreneur Competition, the largest and most prestigious virtual pitch competition for high school students around the world. In the competition, students develop a business idea, shape it with blue ocean strategy and present it in a short pitch video. When we asked past participants what happened to their ideas after the competition, these students told us they had kept building them.
Some are still in high school. Some are now at university. Between them they’re working on medical hydrogels, wildfire sensors, assistive technology and machines that turn an invasive plant into fuel. Here’s what each one built, where it is now, and the moment that changed how they saw their idea, in their own words.
Teen entrepreneurs at a glance
Teen entrepreneurs are high school students who start and build their own ventures. The founders in this guide:
- Lila Mokhtari, USA: Maji, a soap brand that gets young children excited about washing their hands
- Nutvarit Manorotchaturong, Thailand: Mangicare, a hydrogel developed for hospitals and pharmacies
- Ahlam Ali Abdella, Ethiopia: a machine that turns an invasive plant into charcoal briquettes and animal feed
- Jhair Ventocilla Pareja, Peru: Develop a Future, a youth-led education organization
- Aniket Pandey, India: Toornify, a platform for running grassroots sports tournaments
- Mihir Singla, USA: EmberGuard, a network of wildfire detection sensors
- Santusht Narula, Singapore: Waste Fellows, a venture that turns food waste into something of value
- Parikaa Doshi, India: ReadEase, a device that helps people with visual impairments read
- Divyam Aneja, India: SkillVora AI, a student-led program teaching practical AI and digital skills
What’s on this page
- What is a teen entrepreneur?
- Teen entrepreneurs and what they’re building
- What these teen entrepreneurs have in common
- How to start as a teen entrepreneur
- About the Blue Ocean Competition
- FAQ
What is a teen entrepreneur?
A teen entrepreneur is a young person, usually of high school age, who starts a business or a venture with a mission and takes responsibility for building it. You’ll also hear the terms student entrepreneur and teenage entrepreneur. A student entrepreneur is anyone who builds a venture while still studying, whether at high school or university.
Teen entrepreneurs don’t need a registered company or investors. Many start with a problem they’ve noticed, a prototype and a few early users. Some ventures make money from day one. Others start as social impact projects and grow from there.
What the teens in this guide share is the way they approached their ideas. Each used blue ocean strategy, developed by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, professors of strategy at INSEAD and the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy. It describes two kinds of markets. Red oceans are existing markets where companies fight over the same customers. Blue oceans are new, uncontested market space where the competition becomes irrelevant. You’ll see that idea come up again and again in the stories below.
Teen entrepreneurs and what they’re building
Everything below comes from what these students told us in our past participant survey. Where they’re up to, and what they’ve achieved, is in their own words.
1. Lila Mokhtari, USA: Maji
Lila’s idea started at home, with a little sister who had to be reminded again and again to wash her hands. It was a constant source of stress in the house.
Lila’s answer was Maji, a bar soap with a collectible toy hidden inside. With every wash, a child gets a little closer to uncovering the toy. In the pitch, Lila explained who Maji was for: children aged nine and under who don’t want to wash their hands. Most soap brands compete for adult buyers on price, so those children were noncustomers the industry had overlooked. Lila described soap and toys as two crowded markets, and Maji as a new space between them, “motivational soap.”
Before the competition, Lila had already won the Young Entrepreneurs Academy’s America’s Next Top Young Entrepreneur title and been featured in Forbes. Maji then placed second in the world in the 2025 Blue Ocean Competition. Lila told us Maji now has a manufacturer and has been selling at fairs and in local boutiques. Lila is now studying applied economics and management at Cornell University, with plans to grow Maji into a larger brand.
Advice
“Enter to gain experience, learn from the valuable mini course, and to have a shot at winning one of the world’s most prestigious business competitions because it’ll change the trajectory of your business if you do.”
2. Nutvarit Manorotchaturong, Thailand: Mangicare
Nutvarit is developing Mangicare, a hydrogel product. Nutvarit told us the team has developed a new formulation and is waiting for FDA approval so it can be sold to hospitals and pharmacies.
After the Blue Ocean Competition, Nutvarit took Mangicare to the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva and presented what the competition had taught about red and blue oceans. The project won a gold medal and a special award.
The blue ocean moment
“The blue ocean and red ocean comparison really was the turning point of Mangicare. After I learnt about that, I would always think if there is an existing product in the market already or if I’m starting a new one.”
Nutvarit wrote about the experience in a college application essay, describing how the competition changed a way of thinking at home and at school.
Advice
“Don’t care if you think your project is bad, just submit it. It might end up getting first and you would never know if you don’t try.”
3. Ahlam Ali Abdella, Ethiopia: turning an invasive plant into fuel and feed
Ahlam and the team are building a semi-automated machine that converts Prosopis juliflora, an invasive plant, into charcoal briquettes and animal feed. Ahlam told us they’ve built a working prototype, presented it at innovation and entrepreneurship programs, and are moving toward commercialization through FAHMWAN Trading PLC, with the goal of creating jobs and environmental benefits for local communities.
The blue ocean moment
“Initially, I saw it mainly as a charcoal production business. Through the competition, I realized that we were creating a unique solution by transforming an invasive plant, Prosopis juliflora, into multiple valuable products, including charcoal briquettes and animal feed. This helped me focus less on competing in existing markets and more on creating new value.”
Advice
“Even if you do not win, the experience and knowledge you gain are worth it.”
4. Jhair Ventocilla Pareja, Peru: Develop a Future
Jhair and a teammate entered the competition with Develop a Future, a youth-led education organization. Jhair told us it’s now accredited and registered as an official organization with Peru’s Ministry of Education and the National Youth Secretariat, in recognition of its impact on education. Develop a Future also raised funds through a competition funded by the International Baccalaureate (IB), and Jhair presented the organization’s work at Teach For All’s Better Future Forum in Singapore.
Jhair is now studying economics at Haverford College, and told us Develop a Future was a key part of the college application.
The blue ocean moment
“Before the competition, I thought my developed idea was fully ready because it solved a clear problem. The turning point was the mini-course. It made me realize that solving a problem isn’t enough if you’re stuck in a ‘red ocean’ of standard solutions.”
Advice
“Don’t let fear hold you back; you have so much to gain and absolutely nothing to lose by putting your ideas out there.”
5. Aniket Pandey, India: Toornify
Aniket is building Toornify, a platform that helps organizers run grassroots sports competitions: registrations, scheduling, brackets and participant management in one place. Aniket told us the core product is built and the team is preparing pilot deployments, with incubation support and opportunities through the Wadhwani Foundation, IIT ecosystems and ISB’s I-Venture in Hyderabad. Toornify is now incubated at the Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industries, in association with the Government of West Bengal.
The blue ocean moment
“Blue Ocean thinking shifted my mindset from asking, ‘How can we build a better tournament platform?’ to ‘What problem are we actually solving?’ That change led us to think beyond esports and reimagine the platform as digital infrastructure for grassroots sports. Instead of competing on existing features, we started focusing on underserved organizers and participants who lacked simple, affordable technology.”
6. Mihir Singla, USA: EmberGuard
Mihir is building EmberGuard, a wildfire detection sensor. Mihir told us the project has moved from a commercial-grade prototype and lab testing to deploying sensors in the community, with research underway on the next generation of sensors. Mihir also launched EmberProtect, a nonprofit, community-focused arm of the project, soon after the competition, and is applying for Firewise USA recognition.
What changed
“I realized that a real innovator/entrepreneur doesn’t just marginally make an idea better and then try to sell it for a slightly lower price than their competition, they carve a new path for themselves and their product/service.”
Advice
“Just compete, there’s no point in not trying. What’s the worst that can happen? Besides, competitions like these are where the real learning happens.”
7. Santusht Narula, Singapore: Waste Fellows
Santusht and the team had been working on Waste Fellows, a venture that turns food waste into value, for a year before entering the competition. Santusht told us they’ve since scaled it across Singapore, won more competitions, received backing from the Singapore government and raised funding from the ACT Foundation to grow further. The team still uses the blue ocean frameworks when pitching to investors and explaining how the idea differs from competitors.
What changed
“The frameworks taught us so much. They are really powerful when used well, and we were able to mould our original idea into something that had its own market.”
Advice
“The pain of regret is a lot more than the uncomfortableness of trying. You only have things to gain, even if you just go for the course, or whether you make it to the end as a winner.”
8. Parikaa Doshi, India: ReadEase
Parikaa’s team is developing ReadEase, an assistive device that improves access to information for people with visual impairments. Parikaa told us the project was selected for the 2026 IB Global Youth Action Fund, with grant funding to support prototype development and testing. The team is now working on its next version, building partnerships, showcasing the project at innovation events and preparing a provisional patent.
The blue ocean moment
“The Blue Ocean framework pushed us to validate our assumptions rather than simply build a solution we believed was useful. As a result, we spent more time conducting user interviews, engaging with visually impaired individuals, and understanding whether the problem we were solving was significant enough to warrant a solution.”
Advice
“Just do it. Regardless of the outcome, the learning experience is incredibly valuable and can genuinely shape the direction of your project.”
9. Divyam Aneja, India: SkillVora AI
Divyam built SkillVora AI, a student-led learning initiative that makes AI and digital skills simple and practical. Divyam told us it has run learning batches and workshops, built structured learning resources and received grant support from innovation programs. Learners don’t stop at theory: they apply what they learn by building presentations, websites and digital content.
The blue ocean moment
“Earlier, I believed that the best ideas had to be entirely new or based on technologies that no one had ever used before. The Blue Ocean framework made me realize that true innovation is about creating new value, not simply creating something new.”
Advice
“You do not need a perfect idea or a complete business plan to benefit from the experience.”
What these teen entrepreneurs have in common
These nine teenage entrepreneurs live in six countries and work in completely different fields. Their stories still follow a similar path.
They started with a problem they could see. A little sister who wouldn’t wash her hands. An invasive plant spreading across the land. Students struggling to learn digital skills. None of them started by asking “what business could I start?” They started with something that bothered them.
They moved away from the crowded market. Almost every one described the same shift: from trying to build a slightly better version of what already exists to creating something that stands apart. Aniket stopped competing on features and focused on organizers nobody was serving. Lila designed Maji for children the soap industry had overlooked. That’s the heart of value innovation, which Kim and Mauborgne define as “the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost, creating a leap in value for both buyers and the company.”
They kept going after the competition. The competition was a starting point for all of them. They built prototypes, tested with users, entered new competitions, found grants and partners, and kept improving.
They told the story on their college applications. Several wrote about their venture or the competition in their essays. Lila listed the competition result as an award and wrote an essay about it. If you’re thinking about how to show initiative to colleges, our guide to leadership examples for students covers how to describe it.
How to start as a teen entrepreneur
You don’t need funding, a registered company or a finished product to start. Here’s the path most of the founders above followed:
- Notice a problem. Look at your home, school and community. What frustrates people? What do they put up with because nothing better exists?
- Look at who isn’t being served. Ask who doesn’t buy any of the current options, and why. Those noncustomers are often where the best ideas start.
- Develop an idea that stands out from the crowd. Decide what to eliminate that your industry takes for granted, what to reduce well below the industry’s standard, what to raise well above it, and what to create that the industry has never offered.
- Talk to real users. Test your assumptions with the people you’re building for before you build too much.
- Pitch it. Explaining your idea clearly to other people shows you quickly what works and what doesn’t. Entering a pitch competition gives you a deadline and a way to test your idea against students from around the world.
For more detail, read our guides on how to start a business as a teenager, how to write a business plan for students and how to pitch a business idea. If you need a starting point, our list of small business ideas for teens has more examples from students around the world.
About the Blue Ocean Competition
The Blue Ocean Student Entrepreneur Competition is free and open to any high school student, anywhere in the world. You can enter on your own or in a team of up to five.
Every entrant gets the free Blue Ocean Mini-Course, a short online course that introduces blue ocean strategy, along with the official pitch template. You develop a business idea that strives to stand out in the marketplace, record a pitch video of three to five minutes and submit it online. In 2026, more than 23,000 students from 9,000+ schools in 173 countries took part.
Every founder in this guide started exactly there.
FAQ
Can you be an entrepreneur at 16?
Yes. Many young entrepreneurs under 18 start ventures while still in high school. Depending on where you live, you may need a parent or guardian to help with things like contracts, bank accounts or registering a company, but nothing stops you from developing an idea, building a prototype and testing it with users.
What is a student entrepreneur?
A student entrepreneur is someone who builds a business or venture while still in school or university. Many of the student entrepreneurs in this guide started in high school and kept building after they moved on to university.
Do you need money to start a business as a teenager?
Usually not at first. Most of the founders here started with a problem, a simple prototype and conversations with potential users. Funding, where it came, followed later through grants, competition prizes and supporters who saw the idea working.
Do I need a finished business to enter the Blue Ocean Competition?
No. The Blue Ocean Competition is looking for innovative business ideas that stand out from the crowd, so you don’t need a running business to enter. You develop your idea and present it in a pitch video. If you’ve already tested your idea with real users, that helps show it can work.
What do teen entrepreneurs gain besides the business itself?
The founders in this guide talked about confidence, presenting their ideas, validating assumptions, and a new way of thinking about problems. Several used the experience in their college applications.
Your next step
Every teen entrepreneur in this guide started with an idea they weren’t sure about. Nutvarit put it simply: “Don’t care if you think your project is bad, just submit it.”
Register for the Blue Ocean Student Entrepreneur Competition and get the free Blue Ocean Mini-Course to start developing your idea.
The largest and most prestigious virtual pitch competition for high school students around the world
Pitch your blue ocean idea
Register free and we’ll send you the Blue Ocean Mini-Course and the official pitch template.
The next blue ocean is yours to create. 🌊
