Pisay students join YouthHack Manila Startup Challenge 2016
A handful of PSHS-MC students from different batches participated in the YouthHack Manila Startup Challenge which was held at the Asian Institute Management in Makati last May 28 to 29, 2016.
The startup challenge is an annual event conducted by YouthHack, an organization that encourages students to brainstorm and create innovative projects. The weekend was composed of seminars, workshops, and a pitching competition to enhance students’ ideas and possibly turn them into real life projects through the support of local entrepreneurs and experts.
Jasper Refuerzo and Jose Enrico Salinas from Batch 2018 were able to bring home the 1st place award for the high school division.
Flow, their award-winning idea, is an educational tool to make programming easier for students.
“One of the key issues is that many teachers, especially in high school, teach the syntax of the programming language instead of teaching the logic first. So when students actually have to solve their own problems, they don’t actually know how to tackle the problem,” Salinas said.
Flow stemmed from their research project, but after encountering difficulties with it, the 2018 pair joined YouthHack in hopes of further developing and making their idea a more tangible one.
“We were invited to an accelerator program. There, they taught us the basics of business and pitching, how to market our product, how to get user data, etc. They also introduced us to investors and mentors. Since then, we’ve made a lot of progress and we plan to continue with our startup sometime this year,” Salinas commented on how winning the competition helped them in their project.
Overall, the event was a great learning experience for the students.
“It allowed us to have a sense of desire to turn our ideas into reality; a Mark Zuckerburg-esque dream, kind of, to make a small idea into something people can depend on. If there’s anything YouthHack shared us, there’s one core concept that they’ve left us with — that if society’s problems hasn’t been solved yet, why don’t you try solving them? Don’t wait around for someone else to do it,” Refuerzo stated.
