Passing Down Future Engineers Summer Camp
For the past four years of high school, a few friends and I ran a business called Future Engineers Summer Camp (FESC) in the Bay Area. The camp started in the living room of one of our houses, with eight elementary grade students huddled around a set of LEGO robotics pieces.
Fast-forward to present day, and FESC runs after-school robotics classes, provides teachers to the international after-school program Safari Kids, and has five different course offerings during the summer, ranging from Public Speaking to WebDev and more. We’ve generated $45,000 in revenue this past summer alone, and more importantly, have taught hundreds of students about STEM topics.
However, as our core team entered college in universities across the nation, we decided that it would be near-impossible to effectively run a business that, at its core, requires an in-person presence. For that reason, it was time to pass down the company to another set of students as passionate about creating a difference in our community as we were. After all, we didn’t want the business we’ve been working on for the past four years to just die because we weren’t there.
Over these past two months, we’ve found two motivated students and have been negotiating a deal with them. I’m now happy to announce that we’ve finally sold FESC.
So with my direct involvement with FESC coming to a close (I’m still staying on as an advisor!), I decided that it would be appropriate to reflect on some of the lessons I’ve learned through working on this company over the past four years
On Marketing:
When running a business, it can feel like you’re spending tons of time on marketing and selling your product, with little-to-no visible impact. Unfortunately, a lack of effective marketing can cripple even the greatest product, stomping the business to the ground before it has a chance to stand up.
I experienced this first-hand in FESC in the months leading up to the 2016 summer. Looking to find a way to increase our sales for the summer, I decided to revamp our marketing approach. Instead of promoting our camp in front of libraries as we did in years past, I began to sign up and pay for booths at large community-wide events. Fall Festival, Cherry Blossom Festival, Earth Day — we were at all of them, promoting our business to anyone who would listen. I had thought that by exposing and promoting our business to more people at these large events, we’d end up with more sales and more revenue.
Unfortunately, our growth rate that year was abysmal. Our camp barely reached more students than in the previous year, a bad sign for such a young business. Through this experience, I learned about one of the most important things in marketing: the value of underpriced attention.
Unfortunately, a lack of efficient marketing can cripple even the greatest product, stomping the business to the ground before it has a chance to stand up.
The issue with these large-community wide events is that like us, every single booth at that event was promoting and selling their business to anyone who would listen. As a result, FESC was unable to catch the audience’s full attention, and even the most interested of people there probably forgot about us by the end of the day. What’s even worse is that FESC was paying almost up to $300 for some of the booths at these events, without getting a single sale out of it. Not only were we losing time, but we were losing money too.
In retrospect, underpriced attention is the same reason why marketing outside of the library was so effective for us. Most of the time, we were the only booth set up next to the library door, so we’d have the full attention of any person walking in or out of the library. Often, we’d be able to net one to three sales in just an hour of marketing at the library. From that year forward, we doubled down on our library efforts and other similar underpriced attention opportunities, resulting in a decent amount of growth for our camp over a short period.
On Competition:
At the start of 2016, FESC learned about a new summer camp in our area: Secrets to Success. This summer camp provided similar STEM-related courses that FESC did, during the same time period. Here’s the kicker: the camp was founded by a separate group of our friends at our high school. Even worse, one of the co-founders was the son of our location provider in the previous year, forcing us to find a new location to run our camps.
When others start to copy you, your only option is to start innovating and differentiating yourself. Otherwise, you risk getting lost in the sea of copycats. So that’s what we did at FESC — we started to innovate and differentiate.
The following year, in 2017, FESC added after-school classes and a Java summer course to our repertoire. In 2018, this past year, FESC started to provide teachers to the Safari Kids after-school program, adding a source of revenue. We also added a new Public Speaking and Raspberry Pi course. It’s because of these innovations that our camp is still going strong today, while many of our other competitors have slowed down or closed completely.
When others start to copy you, your only option is to start innovating and differentiating yourself.
You can see this happening with businesses today. When Instagram came out with its take on Stories, Snapchat failed to improve and step up its game. The effects are clear, with Snapchat’s stock consistently dropping ever since it’s IPO in March 2nd, 2017, along with their first ever decline in users this past quarter.
On Teaching:
At its core, the purpose of FESC is to turn the younger generation of today into the engineers of tomorrow. Through four years of running classes, we’ve come to learn that the most critical part in doing so is the teacher. This is because the teacher has the most significant impact on the experience of a child in a class. If the teacher is bad, the student will not enjoy the course and will not want to learn the subject matter going forward.
Over these past four years, I’ve learned how to spot, hire, and train good teachers. It isn’t enough to find a person who is familiar with the subject matter. In fact, I’d argue that finding someone with experience in the subject matter is the least important aspect of a good teacher. Instead, teachers need to be sociable and focused people, who love working with kids. The subject matter is much easier to learn than these soft skills. For this reason, I feel that high school students as teachers are often more effective than experienced professionals. High schoolers can relate to younger kids better and can engage with them at a higher level, while professionals tend to focus on just teaching the subject matter.
It’s because of our 25+ teachers that FESC consistently delivers a great experience and maintains a 5-star review on Yelp. In fact, one of our reviews even says:
My son attended this summer. To be honest, I was a tad wary at the beginning. High schoolers in charge of my middle schooler…..Seemed a bit scary. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The boys running the camp were very professional, organized and enthusiastic. My son loved every day of camp and was very eager to attend. He learned a lot too. In his opinion, this camp was awesome because ‘The instructors are kids and they get how to engage and teach kids without being boring’, in his words.
He’s ready to go again. As is his sister. — K.B
Through working on FESC, I’ve learned a lot about creating and running a business. Leveraging this experience, I’m now working on a new education startup with one of my partners on FESC, Sameer Kapur. Our startup is called Teacher.ly, and we’re currently looking for more high school students to join our program as teachers. If you’re interested in making an impact on the world while making some money, shoot me an email at saurav@teacher.ly!
For more interesting content from student founders and entrepreneurs, check out Sameer’s article about his business he started in Purdue: https://medium.com/@sameerk/matchly-a-college-side-project-6cb6490214ff
