Students start from scratch at TiE Young Entrepreneurs regional finals, vying for three points in global competition – GeekWire
More than 100 students competed in the recent TYE Seattle Chapter Finals at Bellevue College, with a team building an AI-powered email assistant taking first place and earning a spot in the world competition next month.
The event was organized by TiE Young Entrepreneurs, a program under the global network of The Indus Entrepreneurs that provides students in grades 9-12 with experience building companies from scratch. This year’s Seattle-area cohort included students in 20 teams, pitching businesses in industries including artificial intelligence, child nutrition, marine plastic recycling, mental health and healthcare.
The TYE program has been active for over 20 years, now covering over 40 cities around the world. TYE Seattle won first place in the world two years ago.
Prior to the competition, technology executives from Amazon, Microsoft and OpenAI participated in a panel discussion on careers navigating the age of AI. Aravind Bala, founder and CTO of SeekOut, moderated.
- Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of agent AI at Amazon Web Services, encouraged students to use AI as a building tool in their areas of interest, citing the rapidity of testing he’s seen across his teams. Sivasubramanian said that in the age of AI, “entrepreneurial skills will be more important than ever.”
- Vijaye Raji, chief application technology officer at OpenAI, urged students to have a “no regrets” mentality, saying that many decisions are reversible and the only way to understand the outcome is to follow it.
- Aseem Datar, chief product officer leading next-generation AI and quantum computing work at Microsoft, emphasized the importance of building a breadth of knowledge across disciplines as a source of high potential.
Five teams made it to the finals of the competition: DuggAI, Hydrobin, Healix, NeuraKind, and Tiny Tummies.
DuggAI took the lead with an AI email agent that pulls context from multiple services to generate intelligent responses, presented in a swipe-based system modeled after a short-form video feed. Team members include Ashish Naik, Shaurya Duggal and Kruthik Ankam, all from Skyline High School in Sammamish, Wash.
“The bar at TYE rises every year, but this group raised it the most I’ve ever seen,” said Bala, who is also a TYE teacher. “AI has revolutionized what a team of high school students can build in a few months, and these students have proven it on stage.”
DuggAI will represent Seattle at the TYE Global competition, hosted by TiE Seattle this year on June 12-13 at Bellevue College. The finals are scheduled for June 13 in the morning and are open to the public.
