This is a throwback to when Forbes covered one of our favorite stories to come from Rocket Club Academy. Written by Kevin Anderton from Forbes:
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Young innovators are on the rise across the world, as countries start investing more in kids interested in STEAM.
And the United States is not about to take the back seat...
TechUnited hosted a venture capital conference and invited Rocket Club Academy, a robotics, coding, and entrepreneurship after-school program for children ages 7-14 in Hoboken, NJ, to present what they had learned in class.
The students immediately accepted, and opted in, eager to show off the skills they had learned in class.
What really hooked investors during their final pitch wasn't the presentation, but the behind-the-scenes education that lead to the presentation.
Here’s how it happened:
The Rocket Club Academy students put their heads together and decided that they wanted to sell lemonade to raise money for charity in a unique, non-traditional way. These young inventors weren’t just going to get buckets and squeeze some fruit. The wanted to use the skills acquired from Rocket Club to build a fully autonomous robot...
From Legos.
And they only had a few days to get the machine working before the competition.
Their captain, Megan, a 14-year old Series A certified Rocket Club member led the team. This group was composed of former winners of the 2021 First Lego League Core Values competition.
It took them only a few days to perfect the entire robotic design and business model...
You may be wondering:
How did they do it?
They started with market research to determine their price points and flavor profile, looking through both economy and premium lemonade brands.
They weren’t about to sell overpriced lemonades that didn’t taste great, so they taste-tested and voted on the best flavors.
Finally, they were able to figure out their margins per cup of lemonade before commencing the main task - building the robot.
Using normal Legos that most children simply play with, the students envisioned and build a fully functional robot. They built the devices that stirred the lemonade, dispensed it, and moved each cup across the table to the customers.
Rocket Club taught them robotics, coding, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship which enabled them to run their own innovative company.
They made a total of $112 selling the lemonade to investment bankers, investors, and conference staff and the money was later donated to St. Judes charity.
After an article was written about this in Forbes, the children gained the attention of Barbara Corcoran, Kevin O’Leary, and Daymond John from Shark Tank.
Rocket Club students are already changing the world with their inventions, and most of them aren’t even teenagers yet.
The group is now looking forward to expanding on this innovation by opening pop-up lemonade robotic stands at several locations around the US, England, and Ireland. They will continue donating the proceeds to charity.
In a few years, these brillant young people will be capable of building machines to solve the world’s greatest problems. They are going to form a generation of socially responsible entrepreneurs with the highest innovative capacity.
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