But Mr. Slipper is optimistic. He should be. He’s just 18, a founding member of the Paly Entrepreneurs Club, an extracurricular group at the local high school that sprang into existence last September — the brainchild of about a dozen students committed to inventing the future. “I want to build something that is tied to what is happening next,” he said. While budding moguls in high school clubs like the Future Business Leaders of America invest make-believe money in the stock market or study the principles of accounting, the Entrepreneurs Club members have a distinctly Silicon Valley flavor: they want to create start-ups. They have met weekly during the school year to discuss their ventures and ideas, explore matters like money-raising strategies and new markets, and host guest speakers. Once, they held a Skype chat with a software engineer in Sweden who described the intricacies of running an online music business. Founding a company in high school is “a great opportunity,” said Vincent Gurle, 18. Later in life, “if you fail at business you might have to go live with your parents,” he said. “But we’re already doing that.” Mr. Gurle, who will attend the University of California, Santa Cruz in the fall, started a business last year aimed at supplying students to companies as software testers. It sputtered when he could not find enough companies interested in buying the service. He counts the effort a success anyway, he told the club at a recent meeting, figuring that the people he met will remember him when he returns with his next idea. Now he is learning how to program for Microsoft’s new mobile operating system. Club members have been working on projects like a social network to help teenagers quickly organize study groups and a trading network for Bitcoin, a virtual currency. They have brainstormed ideas for mobile geolocation games and new kinds of grocery store scanners. At a recent meeting, about a dozen boys gathered in an empty economics classroom at Palo Alto High, known as Paly. The demographic somewhat reflects Silicon Valley, too; there were no girls, though all the boys say they wish some would join their club. There also were few laptops or even tablets in the room, befitting a post-PC world. All the boys had their work on paper or smartphones. They passed these around to show off their latest concepts. Mr. Slipper, who plans to attend the University of California, Santa Barbara in January after a stint in R.O.T.C. boot camp, demonstrated his video-sharing app, speaking quickly so as to leave time for everyone to talk about their ideas before the lunch bell rang. “The syntax wasn’t hard,” he said, explaining the coding involved. “Objective C in the iOS framework took me about two weeks to learn. I’ve modeled the business on Instagram, leveraging speed and ease of loading.” Sympathetic young heads nodded. “How will you protect your intellectual property?” asked Aaron Bajor, 18, one of the group’s founders. He was waiting to discuss a diagram of his own project, a social network for entrepreneurs entering college. “Someone can always copy your idea, but that will be half-baked,” Mr. Slipper said confidently. “It’s not theirs.” James Maa, another club founder, was up next to discuss his project, the study group social network. “We’re not out in public yet,” he said, apologetically. Mr. Maa, 18, plans to study computer science at the University of California, Berkeley in the fall. His social life, which included attending many events for start-ups, had gotten in the way of building the network, which he calls Bubble. Not everyone had a project to present, and that was acceptable.
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