Entrepreneurship in High School 101

Catherine Cook was 15 when she and her 16-year-old brother founded myYearbook out of their New Jersey high school in 2005. Six years later they sold it to Quepasa for $100 million in cash and stock.

All they had at 15 was an idea and a website, but with a little bit of time, they turned that into a life-changing sum. In a 2018 Junior Achievement and EY survey of 500 US entrepreneurs, 13% started a first business at 18 or younger, and the average founder was 28. High school is where it all starts.

Entrepreneurship in high school can really be narrowed down to four avenues: programs, competitions, clubs, and actually starting a business. This guide covers what each one involves, what it costs, and where to begin.

What does entrepreneurship in high school actually mean?

It depends! Each of these avenues covers a different niche and time frame.

Summer programs teach founding formally over a few weeks. The good ones cover the full spectrum of knowledge, from validating an idea to raising money for it, so young entrepreneurs can take that knowledge and put it into action right away.

Competitions are one-off. You submit a pitch or a written concept by a deadline, and some pay real money. You do not need a club, a teacher, or a real business to enter.

Clubs meet during the school year and compete through a state-to-national structure. DECA and FBLA are the two big ones.

Starting a business is the only category with customers, revenue and paperwork. It is also the only one with legal complications, covered below.

Which summer programs actually teach you to start a company?

Summer programs are the most structured route, and for a student who wants to found something, it's all about looking for programs that teach founding strategies rather than business principles in general.

The Venture & Tech Summer Program is built for that student. It runs six weeks entirely online across two sessions. The daily curriculum moves through market validation, customer segmentation, pitching and fundraising, taught in workshops and lectures led by founders and investors, with small breakout groups and mentorship alongside. Students also work on a project in tandem with a VC-backed startup, so they see how an operating company runs while they learn to build one.

The element with no equivalent elsewhere is the founder matchmaking. Students are paired with peers whose skills and interests complement their own, so that potential future co-founding teams can form inside the program. Every other program on this page only assigns a team, lets you arrive with one, or has you work alone. Finding a co-founder is one of the harder problems in starting a company, and a two-week course does not usually solve it.

Tuition is $4,750 for the full six weeks in either session, plus a $35 application fee. Financial aid combines need-based and merit awards, including a limited number of full-tuition awards, and is assessed after admission. No prior business experience is required, and students apply from more than 85 countries. Priority Decision is open November 15 to December 31, 2026, Early Action runs January 1 to 31, 2027, and Regular Decision runs February 1 to 28, 2027. VTSP does not award college credit.

Other programs that teach founding specifically: Babson's Summer Study awards four college credits at $6,295 online or $12,995 residential. Tufts' two-week Entrepreneurship & Innovation Bootcamp costs $5,750 residential or $4,225 commuter for summer 2027. Georgetown's two-week Entrepreneurship Academy costs $6,465 residential. LaunchX runs from $6,495 online and $11,495 in San Diego. Our guide to business summer programs for high school students has the full 2027 comparison, including the free options and which programs have published their cycles.

What competitions can you enter as a high schooler?

So far, four of the main business competitions for high school students already have published rules, deadlines and prizes for the 2026-27 school year.

Diamond Challenge, run by the University of Delaware's Horn Entrepreneurship, pays the most: $12,000 for first place in each of two tracks, with $8,000 for second and $4,500 for third. Teams of 2 to 4 students aged 14 to 18 submit a 3 to 5 page concept narrative and a 60-second video. The deadline is January 14 at 5:00 PM EST, and finalists compete in person April 29 and 30.

Blue Ocean Student Entrepreneur Competition is free, fully virtual, and the largest by participation, with more than 23,000 students from 173 countries in 2026. First place pays $1,000. You enter alone or with up to 5 students by recording a 3 to 5 minute video pitch. Pitches are due February 21, 2027.

NFTE World Series of Innovation is online, open to ages 5 to 24 worldwide with no school requirement, and pays $1,500 for first place in each sponsor challenge. Submissions close December 13, 2026.

Conrad Challenge, now run by Space Center Houston, charges $499 per team at its Innovation Stage and publishes no cash prize amounts, which is worth knowing before you pay to enter. Teams of 2 to 5 aged 13 to 18 submit a brief, a video and a website by January 7, 2027. Use conrad.spacecenter.org rather than the old domain, which still serves outdated pages.

Technovation Girls is also free and worth knowing about, though its 2027 dates are unpublished. The Wharton Global High School Investment Competition comes up constantly on lists like this, but it is portfolio management rather than founding, and its registration closed September 11.

How do you join an entrepreneurship club?

DECA charges $8 in national dues plus state dues. Chapters are school-based and need a teacher advisor and at least ten students, so if your school has none, the first step is recruiting that teacher. FBLA charges $10 in national dues plus state dues that run roughly $4 to $20. Both run competitive events through state conferences to a national one.

YEA!, the Young Entrepreneurs Academy, is likely the best answer if your school doesn't offer anything. Essentially, it runs through local chambers of commerce rather than schools, students apply directly, and over about seven months participants write business plans, meet mentors, pitch an investor panel, and launch actual companies.

Can a high schooler legally start a business?

Mostly yes, with three main complications. Please note that what follows is general information rather than legal or tax advice, and the details vary by state.

Forming an LLC depends on where you live. Illinois, Colorado and Oregon set an explicit minimum age of 18 for the person who files. Most states, including California, Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming, say nothing about age. The distinction that matters is between organizing and owning: the age rules apply to whoever signs the formation paperwork, and nothing prevents a minor from being a member. Even in Illinois, an adult can file and a minor can own.

Contracts a minor signs are generally voidable by the minor. The minor can cancel; the other party cannot. The practical consequence runs opposite to how that sounds. The risk falls on whoever contracts with you, which is why suppliers, landlords and payment processors often refuse to deal with anyone under 18 or require an adult co-signer.

Taxes arrive earlier than most students expect. If your net earnings from self-employment reach $400 in a year, you must file a federal return and you owe self-employment tax, regardless of your age and regardless of whether a parent claims you as a dependent. That threshold is far below the $15,750 standard deduction for tax year 2025, so you can owe no income tax and still be required to file. The IRS exemption people confuse this with covers a child employed by a parent's business, which is a different situation from working for yourself.

The common workaround of having a parent own the business until you turn 18 is legal, and it does carry costs: the equity, the bank account and the tax liability are theirs, and transferring ownership later is its own legal event. This is the one section of this guide where you need an attorney and an accountant to really get accurate information.

What if your school has no entrepreneurship program?

Most students are in this position. The Department of Education's High School Longitudinal Study found that 66% of ninth-graders attended a school offering no entrepreneurship course, while 3% took one. That data is from 2013 and remains the most recent nationally representative US figure.

The two options that depend least on your school are competitions and summer programs. Blue Ocean and NFTE's World Series of Innovation are both free, online and open this month. The fully online summer programs remove the travel and housing costs that account for most of the price difference, and VTSP's earliest round opens November 15.

FAQs

What is entrepreneurship in high school, really? It's any of the four avenues above, but what they have in common is the outcome. At the end of a program, a competition, a club season or a real business, you have something specific that you built, entered or ran, and that is what separates entrepreneurship from simply being interested in it. The avenue matters less than finishing one.

What is the best entrepreneurship program for high school students? It depends on what you want out of the summer. If the goal is learning to found a company and finding people to found it with, VTSP is the strongest fit, because it's the only program that runs a full founder curriculum and founder matchmaking together, and it's fully online at $4,750. If you need college credit on a transcript, Babson's Summer Study and UMD's SELF program both award it. If a residential campus experience is the point, Tufts and Georgetown run two-week programs on campus.

How do you find a co-founder in high school? This is the question almost nobody answers, because in most cases you don't. Clubs and competitions put you in the same room as other students who are interested, and sometimes a team forms from that, but it's mostly luck. VTSP's founder matchmaking is the only structured version we know of: students are paired on complementary skills and interests specifically so that potential co-founding teams can form, and then they build together for six weeks. If finding a partner is what's been holding you back, that's the one to look at.

Can you do a summer program and a competition in the same year? Yes, and the calendar is practically designed for it. The competition deadlines fall between December and February, and the summer programs run June through August. A realistic sequence is to enter Blue Ocean over winter break with an idea you already have, spend the summer at a program learning how to validate and pitch it properly, and bring the improved version to Diamond Challenge the following January. Each step makes the next one stronger.

Do colleges care about entrepreneurship in high school? What you'll be able to write about is the honest test. A program you completed, a competition you placed in, a business with actual revenue, or a chapter you founded all give you something specific to describe in an application. A club you attended gives you a line on a list. Pick the avenue that leaves you with a story rather than a membership.

How much does it cost to get started in entrepreneurship? As little as nothing. Blue Ocean and NFTE's World Series of Innovation are free to enter, and DECA and FBLA cost $8 and $10 a year in national dues plus whatever your state charges. Summer programs are the larger expense: VTSP is $4,750 fully online, and residential programs run from about $5,750 to $13,000 once housing is included. Financial aid exists at nearly all of them, and VTSP offers a limited number of full-tuition awards.

Can you start a business at 16 without your parents? Legally, you can own one in most states, and in many you can form it yourself. Practically, a bank account, a payment processor and most suppliers will want an adult on the paperwork, so "without your parents" usually turns out to mean "without their signature," and that's the hard part. The realistic version is starting it with a parent's name on the account and a clear agreement about whose business it actually is.

What if you have an idea but don't know where to start? Validate it before you build anything. That means finding out whether anyone would actually pay for it, and it's the single step most first-time founders skip. Blue Ocean's three-minute video format forces you to do a rough version in a weekend. VTSP's curriculum starts there in week one and builds forward through segmentation, pitching and fundraising, so by the end you've done it properly with people who've done it before.

Where to Start

Students with no prior experience face the lowest barrier at Blue Ocean, where entry is free and the submission is a single video.

Students who want to learn founding properly, and to find people to found with, should look at VTSP's Priority Decision round, which opens November 15 and closes December 31.

Students already earning money from a business have a different first priority. The $400 self-employment filing threshold applies regardless of age.