BETA Camp is a six-week online summer program for young leaders who want to learn how to solve the world's most pressing problems and get real-world experience today.
BETA Camp helps you build the skills you need to succeed like no other education experience through world-class instructors, in-depth curriculum with tactical hands-on learning, and a powerful community.
Summer 2022 Cohort: July 5 - August 12 (~15hrs/week)
$250/week ($1500 total)
Round 1 Application Deadline: December 1, 2021
Round 2 Application Deadline: March 30, 2022
"BETA Camp has been the best summer program I have participated in thus far. The endless resources — especially the experienced guest speakers. Connecting with others who are all as interested as I am in this field was one of the best feelings, especially when able to challenge my limits alongside them."
"BETA Camp has exceeded expectations! I not only got to actually build a startup, but I got to meet people working in my dream job and learn from their experiences, learn business concepts taught in school, and develop a network of like minded individuals who I will keep friends with for life."
"I think BETA Camp is definitely one of a kind. The connections I've made with my team and close we've gotten is absolutely crazy. It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience and I wouldn't have traded it for the world!"
"BETA Camp has truly changed my life. It's ignited a passion for entrepreneurship in me that I never thought was there before and I'm so grateful for the invaluable experience I've gained because of it. I've met so many new friends and gained so many new skills!"
"One of the most valuable things I've taken away is the importance teamwork. At BETA Camp we're constantly put into situations where we have to work with new people. We need to push each other if we want to maximize our potential."
"I've done multiple entrepreneurship programs for high school students. Even though they were in person and had smaller class sizes - BETA Camp is was a lot more engaging and interactive. I've never connected with peers like I have at BETA Camp.
"When I joined BETA Camp I was very shy, but BETA Camp has helped me branch out and become better at public speaking. I got out of my introverted shell and learned ways to turn being a high school entrepreneur into an advantage."
"BETA Camp makes learning virtually so interactive! I'd recommend it to every high school student even if they aren't interested in Business, Entrepreneurship, or Tech because what you are learning can be applied to all career fields."
"Other tech and business programs for high school students I have participated in have been theoretical. I never was able to put any of the plans into action. I appreciate that BETA Camp is aimed to help ALL teams develop and launch a real business!"
"BETA Camp really opened up my mind to new opportunities I would never be exposed to during school, or any other leadership programs for high school students. It gave me confidence in myself that I can achieve anything I set my mind to."
"BETA Camp was much more extensive than any other summer program for high school students as it did not only scratch the surface of business topics, many of our sessions delved very deep into them, which were great learning opportunities for me."
"BETA Camp is what Y-Combinator is to Adults; a startup accelerator that changes your life prospects right from day 1. BETA Camp is unique in the way it teaches theory you can immediately apply to your startup."
"I didn't think that I would have much to take away from BETA’s exposure to incredible speakers in lead positions of the world’s greatest companies. But I was proven wrong. It opened up a world of possibilities for me, painting a clearer picture of future roles I can now work towards."
BETA Camp empowers teens to be independent-minded, creative thinkers in our entrepreneurship program for high school students.
Through the process of building a revenue-generating startup, teens learn to work in teams, solve complex problems, fail and pivot, and make decisions embracing the uncertainty of the real world where there are no right answers - skills that traditional schools are not teaching.
Our proprietary curriculum is based on top MBA classes (at Harvard, Stanford and Wharton) and Silicon Valley incubators (at Google and Y-Combinator). Lectures are delivered in byte sized 2 to 10 min videos tailored for the GenZ learner.
Practice the lessons you learned from the student portal in company challenges where you work on problems that real companies are currently facing. We've worked with organizations like Skip the Dishes and Copy.Ai
We teach HOW to think not WHAT to think. Our leadership workshops for high school students are focused on growing your success toolkit and cover impactful topics like negotiations, money management and problem solving with data —skills you’ll use repeatedly during the course of your career.
Connect with inspiring founders who have built their startups from the ground up and ask them all your burning questions.
Attend intimate, small group Q&A discussions with professionals from a wide array of careers. From traditional corporate paths to startup roles to freelancing remote workers and unconventional career paths, we cover everything that’s out there so you can have a better understanding of the possibilities in your future.
We learn what we do, not what we're told. This is why BETA Camp emphasizes "doing".
By the end of the program, students will have built a working business that solves a problem for real customers. Throughout this journey, students learn to:
◘ Solve interesting problems
◘ Find and curate information
◘ Connect unrelated ideas
◘ Ask good questions
◘ Lead, negotiate, and communicate
◘ Employ a variety of mental models
◘ Fail and pivot
◘ Face unpredictability and uncertainty when there are no right answers
Students learn from industry experts and real-world experience instead of through textbooks and theory. Instead of passively listening to lectures, you'll get more interactive experiences, small group discussions, hands-on projects, feedback & mentorship, Q&A, role-playing, and a lot of community & networking.
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Design Thinking Workshop
Analyzing Data
Critical Thinking
Networking
Delivering Results
Self-Directed Learning
Sales and Negotiations
Building a website or app as an MVP
Building workflows and operations
Decisions making with consequences
Learn the fundamentals of business, technology, and entrepreneurship. This includes exploring up and coming technologies and industries that will drive innovation, the risks and rewards of different types of entrepreneurship, and ways to differentiate from competition.
Live workshops in this phase are focused on helping students break down big problems into actionable steps, recognize pain points they experience themselves, and discover how to work on a team with peers with different opinions and skillsets.
Career Exploration: See how core positions at startups and businesses look day-to-day and identify the skills it takes to break in. Learn why that role is important to the business and what pathways there are to get to that position.
Learn multiple methods of ideation and how to evaluate whether a business is worth building. Students will learn about finding a niche in a big market, where to look for unique insights, hypothesis testing, and conducting user research.
Live workshops will include design thinking for high school students and Company Challenges on conducting experiments to determine whether a new product or service is worth building and collecting user insights and information.
Career Exploration: Get to know the innovation arm of a company and discover careers related to user experience. We'll bring in a founder to answer your burning questions about the mechanics of starting a startup, debunk myths to entrepreneurship and inspire action. Understand your own strengths and skills that you can double-down on to grow into a competitive advantage.
Learn how to build a minimal viable product within 2 weeks with or without code so that you can get your startup off the ground. For the rest of the program, students will focus on iterating the business, get comfortable in making consequences decisions with incomplete information, collect, read, and understand data, and build out operations and workflows.
During this time, every live workshop will help students practice skills they need to build their startups. This learning how to handle rejection, how to write enticing copy, how to launch fast and iterate faster, and how to leverage tech to accelerate.
Career Exploration: Based on students interest in the problems they chose to pursue, we bring in professionals that work in social impact, higher education (MD, JD, PhD), digital nomads (remote work), or disruptive tech careers for Q&A.
Initial traction is hard to get and involves a lot of trial and error as well as pure hustle. While continuing to build and improve the product, students will learn about best practices for cold outreach, strategizing and creating the marketing funnel, and selling.
Students will get to practice creating viral content with entrepreneurs that have leveraged media like TikTok and Youtube to distribute their products/services in live workshops as well as experience real-world negotiations and sales practice.
Career exploration: Founders come in to share how they navigated the early stages of their business.
BETA Camp concludes with a Demo Day where students share the achievements of their business in just a few short weeks. To prepare, students learn the elements of a good pitch, how to plan for future expansion and growth, and performative speaking skills.
Live workshops in this final phase include a growth and scaling Company Challenge, presentation skills practice, and analyzing market size and financial projections.
Career exploration: Hear from VCs who come in for Q&A as well as investors who are judges at Demo Day on what they look for in a successful startup and how students can start generating value today.
Learn the fundamentals of business, technology, and entrepreneurship. This includes exploring up and coming technologies and industries that will drive innovation, the risks and rewards of different types of entrepreneurship, and ways to differentiate from competition.
Live workshops in this phase are focused on helping students break down big problems into actionable steps, recognize pain points they experience themselves, and discover how to work on a team with peers with different opinions and skillsets.
Career Exploration: See how core positions at startups and businesses look day-to-day and identify the skills it takes to break in. Learn why that role is important to the business and what pathways there are to get to that position.
Learn multiple methods of ideation and how to evaluate whether a business is worth building. Students will learn about finding a niche in a big market, where to look for unique insights, hypothesis testing, and conducting user research.
Live workshops will include design thinking for high school students and Company Challenges on conducting experiments to determine whether a new product or service is worth building and collecting user insights and information.
Career Exploration: Get to know the innovation arm of a company and discover careers related to user experience. We'll bring in a founder to answer your burning questions about the mechanics of starting a startup, debunk myths to entrepreneurship and inspire action. Understand your own strengths and skills that you can double-down on to grow into a competitive advantage.
Learn how to build a minimal viable product within 2 weeks with or without code so that you can get your startup off the ground. For the rest of the program, students will focus on iterating the business, get comfortable in making consequences decisions with incomplete information, collect, read, and understand data, and build out operations and workflows.
During this time, every live workshop will help students practice skills they need to build their startups. This learning how to handle rejection, how to write enticing copy, how to launch fast and iterate faster, and how to leverage tech to accelerate.
Career Exploration: Based on students interest in the problems they chose to pursue, we bring in professionals that work in social impact, higher education (MD, JD, PhD), digital nomads (remote work), or disruptive tech careers for Q&A.
Initial traction is hard to get and involves a lot of trial and error as well as pure hustle. While continuing to build and improve the product, students will learn about best practices for cold outreach, strategizing and creating the marketing funnel, and selling.
Students will get to practice creating viral content with entrepreneurs that have leveraged media like TikTok and Youtube to distribute their products/services in live workshops as well as experience real-world negotiations and sales practice.
Career exploration: Founders come in to share how they navigated the early stages of their business.
BETA Camp concludes with a Demo Day where students share the achievements of their business in just a few short weeks. To prepare, students learn the elements of a good pitch, how to plan for future expansion and growth, and performative speaking skills.
Live workshops in this final phase include a growth and scaling Company Challenge, presentation skills practice, and analyzing market size and financial projections.
Career exploration: Hear from VCs who come in for Q&A as well as investors who are judges at Demo Day on what they look for in a successful startup and how students can start generating value today.
"Robots and computers will own any clearly bounded job, skill, or game. Humans should focus on creative work." - Naval
Jobs of the future will value skills like problem solving, creativity, and empathy. These skills are not taught in textbooks or classrooms and will apply even if you would like to pursue science, literature, or medicine.
When was the last time you worked on a problem that didn't have an answer or played a game where you had to figure out the rules and goal as you played?
The real world is not like case competitions or theoretical simulations. Only through building a real business will you experience the hiccups and uncertainty of whether you will succeed with every small decision. A entrepreneurial mind ready to question everything, connect insights, experiment, and continue iterating and tweaking will never fail.
The deadline for Fall 2021 is Friday, September 24th.
We accept students on a rolling basis at the end of each month. All applicants who applied in a calendar month will hear back by the first week of the next month.
If you're a parent, make sure you forward this information to your teen!
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