A YELL OF AN IDEA
Young Entrepreneurship Leadership Launchpad
(YELL) was founded in 2013 by B.C. entrepreneurs Rattan Bagga, Punit Dhillon and Amit Sandhu as a Saturday program for high-school students in Richmond and Vancouver. The trio decided to launch a version in schools; now a charity, YELL operates throughout Metro Vancouver, is expanding across B.C. and plans to go nationwide, says executive director David Cameron.
The three-semester program, focused on grades 10 to 12, has grown from one class to five, with a total of about 130 students. Because classes draw from different schools, most take place after regular hours.
YELL has two parts, Cameron explains. First, students learn theory in the classroom, where they hear from local leaders. The second part? “They go and apply it, in messy learning where they're guaranteed to get rejected along the way, fail along the way, be uncomfortable, be stressed out, have conflict in teams, et cetera,” Cameron says. “That's where the real learning is forged.”
For each class, YELL sources 10 to 15 leaders from diverse backgrounds as guest lecturers. “But they're not coming in to teach,” Cameron stresses. “Entrepreneurs are terrible teachers. They're really good at talking about what they do.”
After forming teams of five, YELL participants must create a business that serves a need or solves a problem. Each team meets with a mentor once a week over three months. YELL culminates in the Venture Challenge, a pitch to entrepreneurs and investors. But unlike most such youth programs, the emphasis isn't on coming up with an idea and pitching it, Cameron says: “Our ethos is, `Come up with an idea and prove it.'”
Only about five per cent of YELL graduates continue with their company, he estimates. “When they start, the majority of students think business is about making money or selling, and they don't understand how it's for them,” Cameron says. “They end up leaving realizing that the entrepreneurial mindset and skills they've learned will apply to any career focus.” —N.R.