>> tom: good evening and thanks for joining us. my colleague susie gharib will be along later in the program. since the u.s. financial markets are closed, we're focusing instead on a group that's likely to have a big impact on the global business scene in the coming years-- young entrepreneurs. as bill gates and mark zuckerberg showed when they were barely out of their teens, young people are very capable of seeing the potential for a new product or service. what's often tougher for them is convincing others of the value of a great business idea. as anna olson reports, that's what some up-and-coming teen entrepreneurs are learning to do. >> my business is delicious new york. i offer honey made cookies and they're 109 calories each. >> reporter: if you think he looks young, well, that's because he's 14. but don't let that fool you, he's already sold 2,000 cookies. >> my company's mission is to offer a healthy but delicious cookie without sacrificing taste i kashgs lee a now wants to take delicious new york to the next level, turning it into a real operating company and he's not alone. so do you entrepreneurs who run baking workshops, a girls' football camp and a theme party planner. that's why they're all pitching their business plans to judges here at the youth base plan challenge in washington. the one whose business plan is chosen gets the chance to go on to the national competition and win a top prize of $10,000. >> judges we're going to go back for deliberations. >> reporter: julie cantor runs this regional competition for the network for teaching entrepreneurship a partnership in schools to teach students how to start a business and she says making a business plan is the first step? that process. >> they're learning reading, writing, math, public speaking but around something really relevant, their own small businesses >> jessicaer is van taes is a case in point. in 2009, enbar reported her idea for selling cupcakes on a pretzel. it won the national biz plan challenge and he used the prize money to launch her company. >> since then my business has expanded and i've networked and learned so much that it could take me places i never thought i would b.. >> reporter: now at age 20, she's selling them in nearly a dozen stores in florida. >> i think it's going to be a global sensation. i see them in so many stores and with so many new flavors and i think that we're just going to expand from here on. >> reporter: that's the type of success the students at this year's competition would also like to achieve. like aspiring hair products entrepreneur tyra ransom. >> i hope the someday become a million-dollar business. (laughs) >> reporter: the khalid khalifa's business plan ended up taking the honors here. he goes on to pitch his cookie business at the nationals in new york and within a few years he hopes to take his cookie business global. >> i think age is just a number. it depends on how you think and if you believe in yourself and if you have confidence you can do whatever you want to do. >> in fact, the experts at nifty say you're never too young to start thinking about being an entrepreneur. anna olson, "nightly business report," washington. >> tom: sometimes, a young entrepreneur's business can be so promising it attracts the attention of a bigger firm, much sooner than expected. that's what happened to nathaniel turner. while he and classmate zach weinberg were still undergraduates at the wharton school of business in philadelphia, they and two other partners started a company called invite media. it created a software platform that helps marketers and agencies make the most of their online advertising. just three years later, google bought invite media for $70 million. turner and weinberg now work for google, running the firm they founded as part of google's doubleclick division. nathaniel turner joins us now from the nasdaq market site. gnat, welcome to "nightly business report." >> thank you. >> tom: when did you first realize you were a entrepreneur? >> probably when i was right in junior high. i started taking hobbys that i had and expanding them to new businesses. back when i was 11 or 12 starting a trading card company and a snake-breeding company were huge successes for me at the time. i was able to buy my car and a few other things. >> tom: from trading cards and breeding snakes to online advertising. tell us about how you came up with the idea for invite media and really what it took to take it from concept to reality. >> it actually started from an internship that zach and i had. we went to an internship out in california to a start up in san francisco. we both had ideas for online advertising. the first idea we had for invite was entirely different than the one we ended up settling with. it had to do with video ads so it was an evolution of a course of two or three years. >> tom: you were a entrepreneur and student at the same time. was it tough growing and running the company while you were still a student at warden? >> i thought it would be and it was probably junior year. we started midway through junior year. to be honest, senior year was actually pretty manageable. when you have less time you tend to manage your time better so i found my grades improved i was able to say "sunday i'm studying tuesday i'm working" so you have to get disciplined. >> tom: all about extreme time management. did you have an exit plan in mind at the early stages of invite media? >> to be honest we didn't. we didn't really expect a lot of acquisition interest as early as we did. we didn't realize how quickly things were growing, a lot of things were happening around us. we went into it trying to build a big company. >> instead a big company bought you. take that experience in terms of other people who are thinking of becoming entrepreneurs. what do you think they can best do to prepare themselves for it? >> a lot of people... well, for one you have to find a co-founder is what we learned. no one can do it on their own. there's certainly exceptions but nine times out of ten it helps to have someone there who complements you. sounding board. i think it's important to get experience working in a startup. the more you learn what's going on around you, how the rise raise money. >> tom: you're a serial entrepreneur starting with snake breeding lately into digital media. having already started and sold a few companies does it take a certain kind of personality to walk away from a company after putting so much of your personality into it? >> at the end of the day it is your baby. you spend more time with it than your friends and family. you become a control freak in terms of all aspects of the business. it definitely becomes part of you. it's harder than i thought it would be frankly and we're still involved. we're still at google. so we haven't completely given it up by any means. when we do the next couple of years i'm sure it's going to be painful. >> tom: nathaniel turner of ininvite media which is part of google's double click division. >> tom: a college campus can be a great incubator for new business ideas, but it takes special attention to help students turn ideas into businesses. typically, entrepreneurial education takes place in the classroom. but three years ago, the university of miami moved it out to the middle of its campus inside its career center and called the project, "the launch pad." dean of undergraduate education william green started the program to help students create their own opportunities. >> when we are teaching students about entrepreneurship and when we're teaching them how to be entrepreneurs, we're teaching them two things. we're teaching them what it means to be free and we're teaching them how to be free. and that's pretty fundamental to our economy and to our society and it certainly reflects a whole set of core american values. >> tom: since the launch pad got off the ground, it has worked with 1,800 students. they have started 45 companies, creating 102 new jobs. susan amat is executive director of the program. >> there's some kind of little gleam in their eyes and it's hard to not notice that when you meet them, because once they start talking about their concept, it's that dream they have that they don't want to let go by another day. >> my name is jay hirschfeld and i'm the c.e.o. of chiral l.l.c. >> my name is trevor cowan and i am a cofounder and partner. and what we do is we take high dynamic gigapixel photos and we put them on clothing. >> tom: hirschfeld and cowan print the high-resolution images on swimsuits, concentrating on both the art and the technology. >> the immediate dream is to get this as many places as we possibly can. whether than means doing a licensing model or manufacturing ourselves remains to be seen. but i think ultimately you want to be a brand that touches every corner, every sort of product that works with a variety of different artists or different designers. >> tom: the launch pad strategy matches students with venture coaches. will silverman worked with chiral in the early stages. >> their strength is in their technology and their artwork and not so much in becoming a clothing manufacturer which is done so rarely on a large scale in this country. >> i'm william villaverde, co- founder and program director of superior academy of music. >> my name is fabiana claure. i am co-founder and executive director of superior academy of music. >> tom: the academy aims to be a new kind of music school that will leverage the founders' advanced music degrees and international performance experience. they hope it will prepare promising music students for professional and academic careers. >> we had no idea how to put this together. with a lot of help with being able to do it. but i think if you have a clear idea of where you want to be you can get there. if you have a clear idea of the business that you want to create i think you can do it. >> reporter: venture coach robert rogers credits their enthusiasm for music for getting them to this stage of their business. >> i think that's such a critical element to any entrepreneur is if you're enthusiastic about what you do you're going to be more successful, because you're going to weather the tough times because you have that attitude and positive energy about what you're doing. >> tom: it takes a lot of passion to make a business out of an idea. it also takes money and experience, two things young entrepreneurs may not have. that's where guys like alex taussig come in. he's a principal with venture capital firm highland capital partners, based in boston. alex joins us now from the nasdaq in new york. alex, welcome to "nightly business report." >> thanks so much, tom, glad to be here. >> tom: your firm does a look ott work with young and inexperienced entrepreneurs. does that youth and inexperience naturally lead to business failure initially. >> well, you can't expect to succeed at everything when you start a company and whether it's a very, very experienced entrepreneur starting a business or a first-time entrepreneur they both fail a lot initially and you have to expect that. we're in it for the long term alongside these folks. there to encourage them through their mistakes and help them learn from them. >> tom: off list of top mistakes. pushing your product, not telling your story. why is the story so important instead of the product? >> well, the story is is important because venture capitalists, unlike your customer, don't buy your product, they buy stock in your company. so they're interested in figuring out if this stock is going to be very, very valuable someday worth billion and billions of dollars and for that your product is important but what's more important is the division of what you're trying to build and the credibility of your team to execute on that vision. that's what i mean by telling your story. it's really linking the team to the vision and communicating that to investors because that's what they really care about. >> tom: it's the whole product not just the end product per se in this case. >> right. >> tom: mistake number two, unnecessary mistakes, hiring staff for short-term needs instead of the long-term fit. why does that lead to problem? >> that leads to problems because, you know, as a startup entrepreneur you're constantly fighting fires, you're constantly underresourced and there's a real temptation to hire someone to fill in a temporary problem but the problem is once that person is in your organization, they here that for a while and it can be tough to get rid of them. so when you make hasty hire decisions you're going to regret them later. we like to tell our entrepreneurs what we work with is outsource as much as you can if you have these short-term problems and only bring someone on if they'll be a team member for the long term. >> tom: hire, of course, take capital and money and another mistake you point to for young entrepreneurs is not doing their home work when talking with investors across the table. why is that so important? >> well, it sounds kind of obvious but it's really important for two reasons. the first is that if you are pitching an investor and you haven't done your home work on the investor. what are nay going to assume about your ability to pitch a customer? are they going to assume you didn't do your home work on the customer? that's not a good signal to send. the second thick is you can pitch a lot of investors without doing your home work and never know if there's a right investor for you. is the type of person to invest in the stage your company is in do they invest in the sector and can they help you build your business? so there are a lot of good reasons to do your home work and those are just a couple of them. >> tom: almost like a job interview, isn't it? >> oh, absolutely. and you have to come with your questions at the end, too. you have to do everything you do to prepare for a job interview. >> tom: if the viewers want to read your complete blogs on the subject, they're available on our web site. alex, we appreciate the insights our guest is alex tau singh of high land capital partners. >> tom: ever since the days of thomas edison, many budding entrepreneurs have used technology breakthroughs to launch their careers. one modern-day entrepreneur did that by designing innovative household products. he's sir james dyson, the guy best known for his vacuum cleaner. midwest bureau chief diane eastabrook reports dyson is now trying to convince young people to follow in his footsteps. >> reporter: at chicago's miles davis magnet academy, a visit by inventor sir james dyson... >> hello, everybody. >> reporter: ...was like a visit by a rock star. >> making mistakes is something to be proud of especially when it comes to engineering and science. >> reporter: dyson, a british design engineer-turned- entrepreneur, was here to lead a workshop for 30 middle school students. they hope to follow in his footsteps by building the proverbial better mousetrap. alicia brown was among the star struck. >> i want to start off in mechanical and work my way to design and then technical. but, i just got hooked on this. it's fun. >> at dyson we think about what's wrong with things and literally go back to the drawing board. >> reporter: t.v. commercials promoting his products, like a hand dryer, fan, and vacuum cleaner have made dyson a household name around the world, and a billionaire. the dyson empire came out of his bad experience with a conventional vacuum cleaner. that led him to design and manufacture his own. and that led to the company that bears his name and employs more than 2,500 people globally. now the inventor believes his unique blend of ingenuity and entrepreneurship can inspire younger generations. >> my desire was to solve the problem and then produce a product that embodied it which people might like to buy, so if you call that a business it's a business. i call it slightly something else. it's solving a problem and creating something that people might be interested in. that is what inspired me. >> reporter: at his workshop dyson broke students into eight groups. the instructions? come up with an invention that meets a particular need and build a prototype in less than an hour. malcolm grba's group decided on a notepad bracelet. >> you take notes instead of writing on your hand and basically while doing that cut down on our paper use for post- it notes and assignment planners that we use to take notes. >> reporter: dyson wandered from group to group. offering encouragement. >> very good. it's very difficult to make something slide. well done, well done. what was really interesting was the enthusiasm they had. going around to each group, to see them doing it and they were solving a problem that they experienced and then doing it so quickly. >> reporter: in the end, though, dyson announced only one winner. >> the winner is the rubbish flush, the garbage flush, if the team could come up. well done. >> reporter: khalied wilson came up with the winning idea. >> it means a lot because i didn't know i was going to win. i'm like kind of excited. >> reporter: do you want to become like sir james dyson? >> yes, i do. i really do. >> reporter: dyson thinks coming up with new and better products is still a great way to create new businesses and jobs. and he believes many future entrepreneurs will take that route. diane eastabrook, "nightly business report," chicago. >> tom: entrepreneurs tend to stand out from the crowd in several ways. for one thing, risk doesn't bother them and entrepreneurs don't mind trying new ways of doing things. that ability to think independently is now seen as something that all business leaders should emulate. take banking executives. during congressional hearings into the credit crisis they were asked why they let their institutions give out unsuitable loan which is later proved disastrous. more often than not, they responded "because everyone was doing it." but there's reason to hope the next generation in american finance won't make that mistake. these business students are being taught to think for themselves as part of a novel program at barbara goldman senior high school in miami lakes florida. >> i'm very... not very common for students our age to be in charge of marketing. >> tom: you heard him right, in charge of marketing a credit union-- actually, a branch of a credit union. jason mulligan is one of six students running this south florida educational federal credit union. considering how important location is for a bank, this one is conveniently located just off the school's basketball courts. >> you need to bring the classroom alive and that's the best way to learn. >> reporter: this is the school's principal. >> these students are not just reading in textbooks about accounting practices. they're not just reading in textbooks about promoting. no, they're actually going out there doing advertising campaigns, generating accounts. >> the credit union known as the swamp may be tucked into a small space inside the school's gym but it's the real deal. it opened in november, 2010, as a real world experience for students in the school's finance academy. over the course of four years students take courses on banking financial plans and economics. >> what's really cool is that when you're teaching it they're like, oh, wow, okay, that's how that that stuff works. that's why i have to pay interest rates. they learn about tariffs and everything that they learned is kind of brand new to them. >> ultimately the students work a variety of jobs in the credit union where they put their new financial knowledge to work. the principal says that real world experience is important. >> there is a difference between theory and practice and for the longest time your traditional educational experience is based on theory and i believe any time you bring the classroom alive that's the best way to learn. >> reporter: and whether serving as a teller or marketing, the students learn another entrepreneurial lesson: they must pay the price of their own business decisions. >> it's very good because i'm learning about it now before i have to handle bigger amounts of money and hopefully i won't get in the same trouble that many people in the country did. >> reporter: that student-run credit union is part of the finance program of the national academy foundation. it's one of about 500 schools within schools. the nonprofit runs around the country in low income inner city areas. the foundation's founder and chairman is stanford aisle with l, best known as the man who built citigroup into a banking powerhouse. susie gharib met with weil l and they talked about entrepreneur ship's place in public education. >> america is still a vibrant country built on immigration, built on people of all different kinds of backgrounds and they all should participate. that's what built this country and that's what we have to get our education system back to which continues to develop these young people because that's where it's going to be at. >> susie: what role do you think middle schools and high schools are playing in teaching students about entrepreneurship? >> i think not really very good because let me just use one example. let's take engineering and in engineering there's lots of opportunities for entrepreneurship. yet american companies that are in the engineering business have to go overseas to find engineers because we're not preparing our young people right. so in teaching entrepreneurship and in teaching the areas where our people can be an entrepreneur we should teach our teachers how to be entrepreneurs so they can teach entrepreneurship better. >> susie: i'm sure you get this question asked a lot about when it comes to being a entrepreneur is it something you are born with or can you learn it. now that you're working with so many young people, what are you finding snout >> i don't think i was born as an entrepreneur. my first goal after my wife and i were married is we hoped we'd save enough money to buy a deep fryer and kodak slide projector. that was our goal, not to be rich. and i started a company instead of buying a house when i was 26 and our company grew and over a long period of time we built what i think was the best financial services company that the world. >> susie: we've seen dropoffs like bill gates, mark zuckerburg turn out to be huge successes. >> that's an understatement. >> susie: what do you say to kids who feel they don't need schooling to be a successful entrepreneur? >> i think that bill gates would tell you that everybody needs a certain amount of schooling. i would say to a young entrepreneur that education is really the most important thing that's going to help you be a more successful entrepreneur so you really owe it to yourself to get a good education because your odds of being successful in whatever you do is going to be increased dramatically. >> what's the best advice you can give to young people who are trying to pro detective what's the next big thing? >> i've got to tell you based on myself and i've never... i want to use a sports analogy of being a home run hitter on every swing you're trying to hit a home run. i think you've got to go and think about life as doing it a step at a time and if you try and jump steps lots of times you'll set yourself up for big falls. so i don't think... people should build the base of their learning and their abilities and grow a some it foundation so that when opportunities do present themselves and they want to take that chance they've built the base so that there's a much better chance that they're going to be successful. >> susie: thank you so much for your time, it's been great talking to you. >> thank you, susie. >> tom: finally, while young entrepreneurs are known for their self-confidence, a little humility may also be a good idea. remember nat turner, the young entrepreneur we introduced you to in the beginning of the program? he says he sometimes has to remind his friends, "you may know a lot, but you don't know everything." i'm tom hudson. good night, good luck and thanks for watching! 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