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URBAN Teens eXploring Technology, a tech nonprofit in South Los Angeles, hosted Krishna Gupta, CEO of Sortfolio, to discuss lessons on business successes and failures as part of the organization’s 15-week summer coding academy.
“Failure is not trying,” said Krishna Gupta, current CEO of Sortfolio and co-founded of Bean Genius, two rising start-ups that mesh creative thinking and technology with profitable ideas.
[img]1947|right|Mr. Gupta||no_popup[/img]Mr. Gupta was a featured speaker this past Saturday at URBAN Teens eXploring Technology (URBAN TxT), a South L.A. organization that turns teens into tech entrepreneurs by using coding to develop their leadership, business development and public speaking abilities.
During the past five weeks, the 29 teens have been working on team building and computer programming through a project-based curriculum. In the remaining 10 weeks, the future tech leaders will develop web and mobile based products to address problems in their communities. The 29 youths were selected out of 150 total applicants.
The teens, who call themselves TxT’ers as an homage to Googlers, are exposed to multiple tech and business leaders. Mr. Gupta’s experience in entrepreneurship and charismatic approach to business successes and failures make him the ideal speaker to kick off the business development phase of the program.
“I learned that I should not be afraid of failure,” said Xavier, a first-year teen in URBAN TxT. “If I know that my product has a market and that it does what it’s supposed to do, then I will not let fear stop me from launching it.”
Another one of the teens, Alejandro, was impressed by Bean Genius’s ability to learn customers’ taste palates and in turn recommend specialty coffees from the company’s network of growers. “To me it’s interesting to see how technology can expose someone to new experiences,” said the South Los Angeles youth.
URBAN TxT is a nonprofit organization that encourages inner city teen males to become catalysts of change in urban communities. Through coding, teens learn leadership, entrepreneurship, and public speaking skills. Learn more about URBAN TxT visit www.urbantxt.com, explore Sortfolio’s high quality marketplace of freelancers at www.sortfolio.com, and sign up at www.beangenius.com to be one of the Bean Genius specialty coffee lovers.
Mr. Vasquez may be contacted at juan@urbantxt.com
See www.urbantxt.com | Twitter: @urbantxt
