Startup incubators built for high schoolers

The average age of a successful entrepreneur is 45, but that number hides something important: almost every top founder started experimenting and building well before then, often in their teens.

Beta Camp and Young Founders Lab are two high-school-focused startup incubators built around that idea. Students work through building an MVP, land real customers, and pitch to actual venture capitalists, all before they graduate high school.

Both were built by founders with backgrounds at Harvard, Google, and McKinsey, and they're generally regarded as the gold standard among pre-college startup programs. They're worth a look for any student who's more interested in building something than waiting for permission to start.

You don't need a finished idea to apply to either one. What matters more is a track record of actually trying things, even small ones, and enough curiosity to keep going when the first attempt doesn't work.