Young Entrepreneurs Academy of Baton Rouge alumnus Thomas O’Connor, founder and CEO of startup FaceTutor, will soon compete against 35 other teen entrepreneurs from around the U.S. at the YEA’s 12th annual Saunders Scholars National Competition on Saturday, Oct. 17.
The national pitch competition will award over $80,000 in cash prizes and college scholarships to the Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology to the students with the best businesses in the U.S. This year’s 36 semifinalists—who represent 35 middle and high schools from 20 states across the country—will start competing virtually at 11 a.m. Central time for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, as well as for a People’s Choice Award, with the national winners announced at 6:55 p.m.
O’Connor, a 15-year-old Episcopal High School student, won YEABR’s local pitch competition in March, taking home the top prize of $5,000 in seed funding for FaceTutor, an app that can connect young learners with a tutor on-demand, which he compares to an “Uber for tutors.”
However, as O’Connor recently told 225 magazine, creating an app for virtual tutoring took on a new meaning during the pandemic, when many schools announced they would at least partially shut down.
“With teachers, they’re overwhelmed because they had to transition to online,” he told 225. “And students are overwhelmed, too. I definitely started to see the benefit this could have.”
He’s perfecting a beta version of the app to pitch in the national competition later this month.
O’Connor was among 21 local students who participated in last year’s YEA BR program, a nine-month entrepreneurship program at LSU in partnership with the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, where students develop a business idea and pitch it to a Shark Thank-like panel of investors near the end of the term.
“We’re proud of Thomas for continuing to work on his business during the pandemic,” says Sarah Munson, who oversees the local YEA chapter. “We encourage our students to always think creatively, regardless of the challenges they face, and he’s done an excellent job of that.”
The national competition is being broadcast live from Rochester, New York’s ABC-TV WHAM Channel 13 and will be live streamed over the web on both YEA!’s YouTube channel and Facebook Live.
O’Connor will make his pitch via YouTube Live on Panel 2, scheduled to run from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. Central time. Local viewers must register in advance to participate in the text-to-vote People’s Choice Award, a $2,000 cash prize.
