Billie Eilish’s album cover for her hit single; Ocean Eyes.

Billie Eilish, and her older brother Finneas O’Connell, wrote and recorded what they thought would be a simple song that was needed to be sent to her dance teacher. Little did they know that it would become a viral success. The song, Ocean Eyes, was uploaded to SoundCloud and became a huge hit. At the time, Billie was only 15 years old. Her vocal talent was quickly noticed by the public eye and was getting business inquiries and music video opportunities shortly after uploading.

Billie shows aspiring artists that if you have the talent, it will be recognized. Successful artists do not always need to advertise themselves – sometimes the talent will speak for itself. Eilish is going to continue making music that will inspire fans, but is definitely open to other creative options like designing shoes or cars. She also wants to direct music videos. Young entrepreneurs should be encouraged by Billie Eilish’s story that true talent will not go unrecognized.

Vincent Xia, Navami Jain, Megan Wu and Michelle Bao who founded Trofi, a food byproduct re-purposing, online platform.

These four teens saw that tons of food ends up in dumps and does not end up being used for any purpose. They wanted to change this. Local farmers around the area are always looking for nutrient rich products to put in their compost to help grow crops. With the abundance of food waste from businesses, these teens saw an opportunity and need not yet met. They set out to create an online platform that connects businesses who are discarding food scraps with farmers, who could use the discarded food scraps. The food scraps may be used for animal feed or compost depending on the type of scraps. The online platform allows the farmers and companies to post their needs – whether that be to get rid of scraps or to receive scraps. Trofi lets the users post what type of scraps are being given and any relevant details that need to be known by farmers.

These teens have shown a great, innovative way to help solve food byproduct issues as well as turn it into a for-profit business opportunity. By being observant and thoughtful while hanging out at a Jamba Juice, they have created themselves a promising business model. This idea will help local farmers and businesses flourish and have access to resources they did not realize were always there in front of them.

Meet Rishab Jain, an eighth grader from Oregon who developed software to assist doctors treating pancreatic cancer.

Rishab knew that treating cancer demands very precise work. The doctors must kill any diseased cells while being careful to not kill any healthy cells. In the case of pancreatic cancer, this can be the most challenging. The pancreas will move around and sometimes be blocked by other organs, making precision a very difficult task. As a result of this, pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly cancer types. Rishab developed a software that was shown to hep doctors be more precise when working on the pancreas when the software was tested in simulations. His software won him the top prize at the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge of $25,000.

Rishab now continues his journey by looking for hospitals and physician partners who would be willing to run a clinical trial and further test his software. Rishab’s work is very important and could have a large impact on the continuous fight against cancer. Rishab shows young entrepreneurs that it is never too early to begin making a difference in the world. He tells his listeners that he desires to make an immediate difference in people’s lives just like he has seen doctors do before him.