13-Year-Old CEO Steals the Show At TiECON 259
An anonymous reader tells us about a 13-year old Silicon Valley CEO with a plan to change the way kids learn chemistry. Yesterday he stole the show at TiECON 2007, the big entrepreneur conference held in Santa Clara, CA. VentureBeat has the story and a video interview. The company's VP of sales is the CEO's sister. She's 11. They're looking for $100K to ramp up production and distribution.
13-Year-Old CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:13-Year-Old CEO (Score:5, Funny)
Specifically, it requires a deal with the devil. Trade in your soul and common sense for investor cash and lawyers. (It's not like the devil has a shortage of the latter)
Re:13-Year-Old CEO (Score:5, Funny)
Oblig references continue. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
-- From a guy who got a Computer Science degree and is now working on an MBA because he knows he's screwed.
Re:13-Year-Old CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:13-Year-Old CEO (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, go talk to Paul Graham. He knows more than you do, given the fact that when he was running a startup he was juggling the jobs of CEO, programmer, system administrator, sales, and just about everything else a big business shuttles off to seperate departments. He defines the PHB as a manager who doesn't program.
Also, way too often, the CEO often doesn't know anything about programming, Ballmer just to name one, and in those cases, disaster results. A computer company CEO that doesn't know how to program is like an engineer who doesn't know the laws of physics or how his building materials work. This would never even be considered for an engineer but is almost par for the course for a bad computer company.
Also, ambiguity isn't the end-all-be-all for difficulty. Actually, your primary job should be to know enough to remove that ambiguity. The only way you can have near-complete ambiguity is if you're given no input at all. And if you're a CEO with no input at all, there is a communications problem on your side which needs to be fixed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Only coders ever seem to think that. Ballmer may be a poor CEO, but it has nothing to do with his not knowing
Re: (Score:2)
You can start your own company and make yourself CEO. Doesn't automatically make you rich (or evil
The CEOs I dislike are those "Slash and Burn" CEOs - these are usually those who come from outside. They come in, sack and burn stuff every quarter for short term gain, pay themselves bonuses with approvals from the stupid board. Then they leave with a "Golden handshake/parachute" and the company in worse shape then when the
Re: (Score:2)
As a CEO, you have to arse-lick those with power and money, stomp down on your peers, exploit your employees, treat your customers with contempt, view non-customers as potential wallets to be plundered, and generally hate any concept of community.
The CEO's at google, par exemple, would probably not know whether to laugh or to cry at this.
- Licking asses is part of politics, do it right and you get to the top, do it too much and you end up doing it for the rest of your life, for you will be despised.
- Stomping down on peers is BS. You do not have to stomp down on peers to start and lead a successful enterprise. Exploiting your employees is also a lie, although more common. You pay for people to work, but you don't overwork them when they're good bec
Re: (Score:2)
Bad companies with bad CEOs exist. Don't do business with them. If you feel that you have no choice but to do business with them, go to court and sue them for being a monopoly.
What if all the companies in a certain field are bad companies with bad CEOs? And what if they just got out of a monopoly filing and as such by local law you can't sue them again? And what about companies like the music companies that essentially own a bunch of little monopolies(musical groups are not interchangeable)? So on, so on, so on.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, he's just a Marxist (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Cynicism of "/." qualifies you as a poster. (Score:4, Funny)
His site (Score:5, Informative)
Lack of experience (Score:5, Funny)
Kids aspiring to be CEOs? (Score:5, Interesting)
The kid's idea is stupid anyway, sure you can roleplay very basic things with it by providing an analogy, but that analogy doesn't work consistently and does not allow for a deeper understanding of chemistry. So unless you are satisfied with the "iron card and oxigen card equals rust card", it does not allow for a deeper understanding. Don't tell me kids are not supposed to learn more at that (around twelve) age, you're probably expecting too little of them.
Either this kid is a gifted one, in which case he'd better spending his time working on something that has use or he's not and probably articles like this are doing a disservice by encouraging him and by taking his idea seriously. The kid apparently has charisma, but that is only enough for deluding people.
Talking about public education, initiatives like this boy's degrade education. For example not teaching children proper algorithms [wikipedia.org] for basic multiplication, division and addition but instead encouraging them to come up with their own reasoning is the equivalent of starting a coding project with two tonnes of sand and some heavy metals. Most of the kids fail at it. It is not against self development and creativity to build upon the work of others, as progress is incremental.
Re: (Score:2)
Have fast fourier transforms ever been taught in elementary school?
Re: (Score:2)
Btw, to reply in style to your question, yes [wikipedia.org].
WTF is wrong with slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly - how about aspiring to TEACH KIDS IN WAYS THEY WANT TO LEARN?
There, read his webpage [elementeo.com] - find out what his intentions are, rather than just making stuff up.
If you can impart two or three important concepts in this game, which seems more than likely, you've basically got Super Flashcards. And frankly, just getting kids to KNOW the names of elements is one step to getting them to ask questions about elements. What happened to slashdot's ability to dream? I don't get it, I really don't.
Bottom line is, Anshul Samhar inspires, whereas YOU just piss on the parade.
Re: (Score:2)
What I'm wondering: how is game balance achieved in his game.
I was doing machine code programming when I was 8, so I don't agree with "forcing kids to have a childhood" nor do I think forcing kids to not have a childhood is good either. Just don't underestimate what children can do - if you take the time to _help_ they can learn to do quite a lot AND find it fun. And that
If I got 100K when I was 13... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
yeah whatever (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
A smart evil minor might legally take advantage of stupid adults in so many ways and get away with it
But I guess this whole thing is genuine?
wonder if they're hiring? (Score:5, Funny)
*shrug* never worked for someone younger than me
Chemistry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Chemistry (Score:4, Insightful)
You make some good points, but I think you're overlooking a couple important things.
First of all, I really doubt that the intention of this game is to completely replace a chemistry class, much less a high school chemistry class; after all, this is a 13-year-old still in middle school. I think the intention of this game is to get kids interested in chemistry and teach them the basics (regardless of how basic it may be) without alienating them from the subject.
Secondly, it's understandably easy for anyone who sees "13-year-old CEO" to start hurling criticisms and nitpickings. If you just put those aside for a moment though and look at what's been produced, you'll see that the game really could be beneficial to kids that played it. Sure, they're not going to learn about acid-bases or gas laws or this and that, but that clearly wasn't the point of the game. It is what it is and it certainly has the potential to teach kids chemistry, perhaps even instilling a fondness of the subject in many of those who play (and ideally I suppose they would register for chemistry classes and enjoy learning the subject in much more detail). After all, things are apt to stick better in your memory once you associate them with something and, since a ton of kids love games, this may just be a great way for them to learn.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I trump your water card with concentrated Hydrochloric acid!
Wait! did you add the water card to the acide card or the other way around?
Water into acid, why?
BOOOM! all your cards have acid burns on their faces!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I think kids already know about the gas laws:
(1) Whoever smelt it dealt it
(2) Whoever accused it abused it
(3) Whoever whines about "you guys being sooo immature" is doomed to grow up and have a bitter, loveless marriage.
Too young (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm 26 (Score:5, Funny)
Where did you guys all go
Give the kid a break (Score:2, Interesting)
ferguson?? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm modding you up in spirit (Score:2)
We've all had ideas like this... (Score:2, Interesting)
We had a similar thing (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I can see that's where this kid is coming from. Sure, the game won't teach you things like redox reactions, or actual experimental processes, but if you get a good grounding in the basics it makes it much easier to understand the more complex things later on.
I hope ... (Score:3, Funny)
re-title: 13-year-old's parents push him to be CEO (Score:4, Insightful)
it is EASIER for children to start a business (Score:5, Interesting)
It would help if it were good chemistry... (Score:2)
Just glancing through his website I hit a pretty glaring chemical error: "27 Elements: This is the bulk of your army... from gases like Hydrogen to metals like Iron to halogens like Phosphorus; these creatures are the ones that will bring you victory!"
Hopefully this was done by his flunky webmaster and doesn't reflect the attention paid to chemical details in the actual game...
puppets (Score:2)
Anybody can change something (Score:2)
I smell vaporware and marketing hype. But hey, it's business. What should I be expecting from a bunch of suits? I do however pity any student which has to go through this program.
Edutainment (Score:4, Informative)
But for those of you who think this is limited to grade school... at the college level I am familiar with a professor who uses a similar approach. Imagine looking at a Snickers bar and talking about conglomerate rocks, or talking about geological stratification with a peanut butter sandwich. And getting numerous teaching awards for it.
There are some of us who scratch our heads and wonder exactly what he is doing in college. He doesn't teach the upper level classes, but he is a hit with the intro classes. I have seen absolutely no assessment data indicating whether his approach is actually helping these students learn. Perhaps it is, perhaps not.
Over the years I have come to the realization that there is no one right way to teach, and that not everybody responds equally to a given teaching approach. I (a college professor) and my sister (an MD) both like the "soak up as much knowledge from the knowledgeable professor at the head of the class" approach. Chalk notes on the board, copied by hand to to the notebook, working on assignments outside of class, asking specific questions after getting stuck on something for hours, etc... that approach works for us. I really hate games and interactive working-with-other-students approaches in the classroom. I find it to be a copout by the professor; he or she is the one with the knowledge, not my fellow students (who are likely to be less knowledgeable than myself).
But some students do respond more to this approach. The "inquiry based learning" approach is catching on like wildfire in some schools, and some of this has bubbled up to the college level. There are many who sing its praises profess its superiority to "chalk and talk" but from what I can glean from conversations with those in the field of Education, this approach is not clearly better (as determined by test scores), but that it does work better for some (just like the traditional method works better for my sister and me).
As someone in the sciences, I have found that learning is really hard, and not always pleasant, and I do not hesitate to remind my students who are struggling with the material. I feel their pain. But no amount of entertainment will substitute sitting down with the text/notes/assignment and slogging through this stuff alone in the library for hours. I think the idea of individual hard, grueling work as an approach to learning has fallen out of favor. The majority of my students do not study outside of class until a day or two before the test. I can pretty much gage what the scores will be before I even collect the tests based upon the kinds of questions I am asking, and the depth of knowledge required to answer these questions correctly (think thermodynamics here).
In conclusion, I see some - not all - of these approaches as style vs. substance. I think we can all agree that engaging students with the material is always good, but that there is no single approach which will engage all students at the same level. Perhaps the best approach (one which I am gravitating towards) is a mixture of traditional and somewhat less traditional approaches.
Nike! (Score:3, Funny)
It's gotta be Nike, and finally, thank god!
We can credit them with tearing down the corporate 'ceiling' for children. They used to be stuck only in sweatshops, but now.... well, now the sky's the limit.
Here's to you Nike!
This kid is my hero. (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the game's actual usefulness... I remember how much more exciting world history was for me because I recognized the names of cultures and cities from Civilization II. This could inspire the same kind of fascination in kids for Chemistry. Most kids aren't taught a lot of Chemistry until the middle of high school, and I don't think anyone other than the creators think this can replace textbooks completely, but how cool would it feel to walk into your high school chemistry class and already know about valence and the periodic table from a card game you played in middle school? If this game inspired a lifelong love of chemistry in a few kids and helped a few more understand the basic concepts... that alone, I think, would be worth it.
Think of the children (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:13 Year old CEO? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:13 Year old CEO? (Score:4, Informative)
12-year old Nigerian is a certified Java Programmer [javalobby.org]
12 year old programmer creates web browser [msdn.com]
Pakistan's youngest certified Microsoft programmer - 9 years old [nwsource.com]
Covered in slashdot before [slashdot.org]
Re:13 Year old CEO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:13 Year old CEO? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:13 Year old CEO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Go file incorporation paperwork. Poof you're a CEO.
it is not hard to become a CEO, it's a title on a piece of paper that costs for about $150 to file for a LLC. nothing magical, nothing powerful, nothing to give any respect to just because someone says they are a CEO.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the whole point. It's not meant for those studying year 12 chemistry, its meant for kids. Nobody is teaching thirteen year olds "the procedure for a titration? The workings of an atomic absorption spectrometer? Electron configurations? Secondary interactions?" They are teaching them the basic concepts of chemistry that this game attempts to put forward.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Relevant? (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly - can't have them selling their vote for hotdog and fries when selling it for the safety of their eternal soul is much more sexy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Relevant? (Score:5, Informative)
You could not be more wrong. This attitude is what separates drones from fully-formed human beings.
Sure, most teachers aren't good enough to do both, but it's that handful of wonderful teachers for whom teaching while entertaining come naturally that can instill a lifelong love of learning. It makes me sad to think you have never found learning entertaining. I can remember classes in music, film, physics, mathematics, literature and history that were great fun and in which I learned a great deal.
I pray that yours is not a widespread point of view on Slashdot because it could mean that our educational system has failed worse than I thought or that there is a high correlation between people who take an interest in technical matters and those that have no soul.
Re:Relevant? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd appreciate that you wouldn't make far reaching assumptions based on a short post of mine. Especially if you happen to be wrong about it. I have been lucky to have great teachers in high school and it was a joy to learn in their classes. They made mathematics, physics and history interesting, but their goal wasn't to entertain me, but to teach me.
Re:Relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe either method can be successful. For some students (yourself included) perhaps they would never allow themselves to be entertained while learning so that method will not work. I believe whatever method, and I am sure there are others, is employed as long as the student is engaged they will learn something. If the student simply does not care and is busy daydreaming or thinking about other classes they are engaged in, well, I can't believe they will ever gain knowledge on the subject.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To get an athlete to perform at his best you have to get him to do a lot of training, which can be dull. Yet the quantity of training is not everything: quality counts for more. And dull training reduces the quality of effort.
So, to prepare an athlete to do his best, you need to find the right balance of stimulation and repetition. In other words, you can't turn an athlete into a winner if there is no fun in it any more. Remove
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Being entertained is an attitude (i.e. how I relate myself to the lesson) on both the teacher and the student's part.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I exaggerated a bit, but my point still stands. You can't teach some things without a certain amount of text. Printing it on a card and saying that it's a game will not make a valence shell any easier to understand. You can't learn this sort of thing without the basics, and it is unlikely that a card game can serve this purpose.
Personally, writing about a topic is what has taught me the most. Playing a card game might be fun (for about five minutes, if that), but it's not much of a replacement fo
Re: (Score:2)
Why the automatic passing-by of games as a teaching method? Bad personal experience or lack of experience with diverse teaching me
Re: (Score:2)
Is a 60-card collection of trivia really going that useful a supplement? Can you really fit enough useful information onto a card to teach anything useful? IMO, the card game will probably be played solely as a game, if at all, rather than as a learning aid.
It's not meant to be a replacement for a chemistry class, and it's not meant for people over the age of about 16. Even if the game is played solely as a game, it doesn't mean kids won't take something away from it. I can almost guarantee they'll be more likely to pay attention in class if the subject is something they've at least heard of, even if they don't know much about it. Even if the only thing they learn is that copper gives up its single electron in its valence shell, at least it's something, and i
Re: (Score:2)
No, SNL Celebrity Jeopardy Sean Connery never said that, but he should have.
Re: (Score:2)
You could, I suppose, write on every ionic compound a paragraph about ionic lattices, and an explanation about dipole-dipole interactions on every polar molecule's card, but how is that different from the textbook?
Here's what's actually on the cards: [elementeo.com]
Silver Noble (Ag)
Silver is used in jewlery, mirrors, coins, photography, silverware, electronic products, coatings of foods, and instruments. Expensive, though, but not for the queen!
Sounds like a hoot!
Re:Relevant? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can think of at least one child for whom math was boring until he learned that probability could help predict the outcome of games of chance.
Of course, it also gave me a lifelong love of gambling, so I'm not sure it was a net good thing.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
It isn't clear from your post.
Re: (Score:2)
You are right!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:that dilbert comic about OS's comes to mind: (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
That was the one about condescending unix guys (like me, I suppose). More directed at windows fanboys than children.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
You must be new here.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Kids: You have the rest of your LIFETIME after 18 to do business-related stuff. Enjoy your early years of free-time while you can!
Re: (Score:2)
It's not something that kids actually want, or need, or benefit from if you force it on them.
Sure, you don't have to work for a living when you're that age, but it still sucks overall. I applaud these kids for reachin
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
And even better for the parents - they look like they may have a chance to have fun using OTHER people's money instead of the parents
As for childhood, IMO the early years are critical, by the time you're about 11+ you're usually not getting much smarter as a kid (in terms of brain wiring) you're just becoming less ignorant. Decades later you'll be "smarter" based on experience and accumulated knowledge - it's a lot more effort to rewire your brain at this point
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Stealing childhood (Score:4, Insightful)
>to be doing this sort of thing. Childhood is something that should be
>treasured and nurtured. It is very sad they way that kids are rushed
>to adulthood so they can become consumer units. I find the sight of
>10 year old adults quite pathetic.
Yes, it is so awfull that children don't have the time to grow up that they had 400 years ago.
I mean back then, girl had a whole 13 years to be kids before they got married off. And boys got to play and have fun untill the age of 11, at most, before they had to help their fathers with the work.
It is so true that nowadays kids have their youth stolen from them.
I mean, sure, back then kids had to work a lot harder from a younger age. and now they have to hold only parttime jobs while they go to school.
Back then kids had to work hard during the summer vacations, in the field, farming. Whereas now they can relax and spend time with friends.
Back then kids pretty much had their entire life planned and settled down by the age of 16, but now they have the choice of what work they want, and they have the time to study for it, and can wait till they are a whooping 25-26(hell, even further) before they settle down.
But yeah, kids these days, having their lifes stolen from them.
I know i would MUCH rather have my 9-14 year old kid work in a coldmine with me, than my 13 year old kid be the CEO of a little company, because, gosh, being a CEO would steal his youth from him. And working in the coalmine would only steal countless years from his life.
And i would MUCH rather have my girl married off, as soon as she hit puperty(11-13), to someone twice or thrice her age(20-30+) instead of getting to decide for herself at any time between the age of 18 and
Yes, lets go back to how it was, when kids had time to grow up.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't get it, that's exactly what he's doing... reading a book (probably this one [amazon.com]) and playing with his friends ("Let's play start up - I get to be CEO!") The only difference is he may make enough money during his play time to pay for college. And if not, he sure learned more than my friends and I did selling lemonade.
So he gave a s
Re: (Score:2)
Of course not, you'd probably say (if you're a halfway decent parent) "That sounds like a neat idea, let's get out some art supplies and try to make one, and you can explain all the rules to me." And if it were really good, and they really really wanted to help other kids by trying to get it ou
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, then, let me be the first one to say:
AWW, that's so cute! He's adorable! Who's my little CEO? Who's my little CEO?
Re: (Score:2)
Wonder about tax as well... Hmmm. Can kids have their own incomes and do they have to pay taxes on their income? ok maybe they are not legally allowed to earn a salary... But hey some CEOs get paid 1 USD / year, and still get rich