Recapping a great morning spent with the MicroInterns.

Working with the MicroInterns, New Work City, NYC, NY, July 2011

Chris Dixon:

… the next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a “toy.”

Yesterday I spent part of the morning working with a group of 12- and 13-year-old students on their business ideas through the MicroInterns program. Created by George Haines, the MicroInterns program exposes students to the NYC tech ecosystem by giving them the chance to work with startups and VCs for a day (more in Inc. Magazine and ReadWriteWeb).

Over two days of sessions with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from betaworks, Union Square Ventures, Red Rover, Boxee and kbs+p Ventures, and hosted by New Work City, the MicroInterns learned about HTML, UI design, programming, social media, creating a business plan and raising funding.

In my session, Matt Musick from kbs+p, Frank Denbow from Songsicle and Startup Weekend NYC and I * spent our time talking to the students about their business ideas and helping them build their business plans (more pictures on Flickr). The seven students came prepared with 5 different business ideas; two groups of 2 were working on ideas in the social web space, and three other students were working on different ideas for apps under a company to collaborate and cross-promote their apps (awesome, btw). We listened, asked questions, and provided insights to help them refine their ideas. Personally, I was impressed by their sharp minds and understanding of the web, and I asked them a number of questions about how they use the social web, a bit of selfish primary market research. To be frank, I didn’t see a ton of difference between the ideas they pitched me and the ideas entrepreneurs pitch me every day.

Matt Musick of kbs+p working with the MicroInterns, New Work City, NYC, NY, July 2011

Why is it important to support the MicroInterns?

It’s important to help kids understand what entrepreneurship is about and expose them to what it takes to build a product, a service, a community, a company. It’s important for entrepreneurs to share the hard-earned lessons we wished we had learned in school. It’s important to supplement academic education with real-world experience, and it’s never to early to start. It’s important to allow kids to dream and help them understand how to turn dreams into reality.

And it’s important to understand how kids use and view technology. Today’s toys might be tomorrow’s disruptive technologies.

Want to support the MicroInterns and George Haines? Get in contact with George here.

* And thank you to Steve Schlafman for setting it up and creating the business plan outline.