TechTalk: Young Entrepreneurs: Startup Gives Students Platform for Innovation

Alan Zack:

Thank you for having me.

Jania Teoxon:

To kick things off, can you briefly explain Lollipop Labs for our audience and shared inspiration behind launching this startup?

Alan Zack:

Happy to. So Lollipop Labs is eight years old and we just rebranded. We used to be called the Care Group. As you mentioned, our whole model is incentivizing young innovators. We consider our audience be kindergarten to college aged. The whole genesis of our company was built around the fact that we need more students to graduate in the steam science, technology, engineering, arts, and math fields. As a society, we have tremendous issues that we're facing. We can talk about that a little bit, and we need more innovators out there to really be thinking about big problems. And the fact that we aren't graduating enough students in STEAM is going to have devastating impact in the future. So we like the incentivized competition model. We do truly believe when you put out a prize, you're going to get greater participation and people who truly do want to win the prize.

And so everything we do in all of our programs, we always think about what can we offer up as a prize to have students participate. We have four programs. We have innovation challenges, innovation tours, innovation conferences, and eSports tournaments, and we often get, well, how does eSports tournaments have anything to do with steam and innovation? Well, the fact of the matter is that 70% of high school students consider themselves gamers, either hardcore or casual. Of that 70%, they are three times more likely to major in a steam field in college. And so we realize there's a huge connection between gamers and steam minded individuals. What we do in our program is we talk to the students about how they can leverage their gaming skills and their game mind to a career in steam. So that's again, how we really think about all these programs and how we're trying to incentivize the students to want to think about careers in the future in those areas.

Jania Teoxon:

That sounds really amazing, and it's fascinating that you are trying to connect the gaming field and the innovators, right? So it sounds like you are creating a launching pad for future entrepreneurs. Now, a founder typically sets out to solve one specific problem. Given your unique mission, I'm curious how you define the problem Lollipop Labs is trying to solve.

Alan Zack:

That's a great question because that sets up the point that I brought up earlier. The stat that we read when we founded Lollipop Labs was that in 2050, there'll be 10 billion people on this planet. Right now we're around 7.5. Well, 10 billion people in 25 years, more or less is going to have incredible impact to our resources. If you think about our education system, our housing, our healthcare, our water, food, we're not designed for 10 billion people. We need innovation and technology is going to have a huge play in how we are going to survive. And also, let's talk about transportation. We've seen just amazing results with in the last, say, 20 years of how technology and innovation has played a part at a society and moving us forward. And so the idea is that we need to get students excited now to want to pursue and start really making an impact, thinking about how they can leverage innovation and technology to prepare us for that time when our population is at the point we are completely depleting resources.

Jania Teoxon:

The societal impact of tackling these problems through Lollipop Labs is substantial. So I appreciate your commitment to making a positive change. Alan. So with being Eisner ER's Tech Talk podcast, and you kind of mentioned technology, our audience will be very interested to know how you are leveraging technology to accelerate your educational programs and competitions.

Alan Zack:

Technology is the backbone to everything we do, and it's not that fact that we use technology. We introduce technology. All of the programs center around disruptive technologies such as ai, 3D, printing, autonomous vehicles or autonomous robots, robots in general. So a lot of the students in our programs, they have no idea with how these technologies exist, how they can leverage them, more importantly, how they can use them. And so one, we introduce these technologies to the students, but then we also talk about the impact these technologies are going to have in the future and how if they really want to think about a career, they need to embrace it. And so we find that after we introduce these technologies to the students, they get excited. They realize that what they can do will have a real impact, and they're curious on how they can learn more about these technologies. The companies that we partner with are more than happy to share the technologies with these students because they realize that those students are going to be their future employees. We've had many students get internships with our partners. It's very exciting to see that teamwork, if you will, the collaboration happen. And we have, of course, all of our students and our alumni base stay in touch with us and we learn where they've gone after college and the careers they're taking, we can't do it. And ourselves, we are very grateful that we have great partners of different companies that help bring the technologies and showcase the technologies to the students. And we just want to keep building that ecosystem.

Jania Teoxon:

Right? Yeah. So your vision for Lollipop Labs is truly ambitious and admirable, Alan. So for sure. Building Lollipop Labs is not easy. Can you walk us through a pivotal moment you encountered while building your company that had a profound impact on the direction of Lollipop Labs?

Alan Zack:

That is a hard question to answer. There's several points throughout our eight years, but one thing that really did kind of accelerate us was bringing eSports into the fold. And we introduced the gamers in our program to different engineers, scientists, mathematicians, in different careers from different companies. But the theme is always the same. It's Here's what I'm doing to change the world in this company, but I was a gamer in middle school and high school, and I'm using those same skills today as an engineer or a scientist or a programmer. And these students, after they hear over and over again from people in different companies, they start understanding that they're not going to be professional gamers, but it's their mentality that is transferable. And that was a pivotal moment for Lollipop Labs when we learned that so many engineers and scientists, coders have that gaming mentality. And we're really introducing these students. And of course, gaming is very popular among middle and high school students. So we were able to tap into one, a beacon, if you will, a popularity, but then leveraging that popularity to get students excited about where they can take their career.

Jania Teoxon:

It's really remarkable how that moment you just described can be a turning point for Lollipop Labs. I'm going to ask you a favorite question that I like to ask my clients during our initial conversation. Can you tell me one bragging point you're most proud of about your startup?

Alan Zack:

Well, again, great question. Hard to answer because we are so proud to have multiple bragging points. But I'll tell you one. So we worked with the Compton Unified School District in Southern California, and we were grateful enough to work with the Williams Sisters Foundation. They funded an innovation challenge around trauma because they have the attendee price trauma center in Compton, and it's a great resource for anyone to come in and really get help if they're struggling with some trauma in their lives. And so the Williams sisters wanted to figure out a way to really build the awareness among students in the school district. So they worked with us, and we had a middle and high school innovation challenge around trauma. Because of the sensitivity of the topic, we were not expecting a lot of student teams to sign up because we realized that this subject itself is going to be very traumatic to the students.

It's going to uncover a lot of emotions, and they might shy away from it. So we got the word out and we worked with all the schools, middle and high schools in the district. To our surprise, we received over 75 teams to compete with an idea. And these are all original ideas. Now, these student teams do not have to really come up with the invention. They just have to describe their invention. And to our judges, and all of our judges were subject matter experts in dealing with trauma. Were the judges. Were just not only blown away by the number of submissions, but they were also impressed with the quality and how the students really thought through. We had a representative from Samsung as one of the judges. He was so impressed with the winning high school team that they actually flew the team up to Samsung to meet the executives at the company to present their idea. It was just such a bragging moment for IOP Labs because we were able to really have these students kind of bring their best idea, flourish and impress the judges. It was just incredible. And I know the Williams sisters were very impressed with the outcome of the challenge. It just proved our point that students could do incredible things if you give them a platform to do it.

Jania Teoxon:

Right, for sure. Exactly. Well, congratulations on that. Remarkable accomplishment, Alan. It's really evident that it's such a significant milestone for Lollipop Labs. Lollipop Labs seems to be a great platform for collaboration. How can companies get involved in Lollipop Labs?

Alan Zack:

Oh, that's a great question. We are so fortunate to be working with great companies as partners and collaborate, and there's many ways to get involved. Students can go visit them, they can come to the conference, they can be part of our speaker series to students. The best way to do it is just to find me on LinkedIn, and I look forward to having that conversation with partners who would like to talk to students about their technology or about their innovation, and basically excite them to want to change the world like they're doing right now with their stuff.

Jania Teoxon:

Alan, thank you for taking time to have a conversation with me today. And thanks to our listeners for tuning into Tech Talk, the entrepreneurs and innovators who turn to EisnerAmper for audit, tax and outsourcing solutions to help propel their business forward. Subscribe to the EisnerAmper podcast to listen to more tech talk episodes, or visit eisner eisneramper.com for more tech news you can use.

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