This spring, five Boerne Independent School District students won first place in Incubator.edu@Boerne’s second annual entrepreneurial competition, receiving a check for $7,000 in recognition of their company’s comprehensive business plan.
The Bonsai Chef team – comprised of seniors Ishi Estacio, Ethan Coffin, Ty Alexander and Leo Petrui and junior Chase Balderas – was mentored by Glenn Coward, president and CEO of CapabilitySource.
Established to bring real world experience into the classroom, the Incubator. edu@Boerne program matches students with mentors in the community to guide them through the process of developing a corporate idea and company. Coward worked with the five youths for seven months, helping them hone their vision for their company, think through potential challenges and opportunities and create a viable, sustainable business model.
“I was truly honored to work with the Bonsai Chef team,” said Coward, whose marketing operations and innovation company is dedicated to helping the local community. “Ishi, Ethan, Ty, Leo and Chase gave me confidence that the next generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs will lead the way to a better, more just, and more prosperous future.”
According to Jenny Breuer, the business incubator and entrepreneurship teacher at Champion High School, “Glenn and Bonsai Chef were a match made in heaven. Bonsai Chef understood immediately the expertise Glenn could provide them and never took the time he gave or the wisdom he imparted for granted.”
The five Bonsai Chef team members were equally appreciative.
“Our mentorship with CapabilitySource and Mr. Coward provided us with a great understanding of how we should pick our markets, get into the minds of our potential customers, and pitch our marketing strategy to the judges and investors,” Coffin said.
“CapabilitySource mentored and stuck with us through a long and difficult process providing us with quality feedback and valuable strategies that allowed us to not only pass this class, but advance our product to first place,” Petrui said.
That valuable experience will serve the award-winning team well in their future endeavors as Estacio, Alexander, Coffin and Petrui pursue business and/ or economics majors at state colleges and abroad, and Balderas takes the business practicum class as a high school senior in the fall, information in a press release stated.
To learn more about CapabilitySource, visit https://capabilitysource.com or call 866-406-2790.
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