Summary
Every business worth building starts with a problem you’ve felt yourself. This high school senior turned his into an app.
In this entrepreneur interview, Kanishk Sasikumar, a Bentonville High School senior and co-founder of Investo, shares how a DECA competition project became a gamified financial literacy app now live on the App Store and Google Play. Whether you’re a teen with a business idea or a parent wondering how kids learn about money, this founder story shows what it takes to go from a notebook idea to a launched product before graduation.
In This Episode:
- Turning a DECA project into a real startup
- Pivoting from an art tutor marketplace
- Gamifying financial literacy for teens
- Freemium pricing and pilot testing
- Why marketing is harder than building
- Why ideas rarely get stolen
- Choosing a co-founder with complementary skills
- School bundles and bank partnerships
⏱️ Chapters:
0:41 Meet Kanishk Sasikumar
1:18 From DECA to a first startup
2:04 Pivoting to teen financial literacy
4:05 Inside the app
6:26 Marketing through word of mouth
7:33 Freemium model and Startup Crawl
9:20 Biggest lessons: business model and marketing
10:21 Balancing high school and a startup
11:44 How teens can start a business
14:10 Why your idea won’t get stolen
15:05 The money lessons schools don’t teach
16:40 Selling to parents and schools
17:58 Building with a co-founder
20:22 Five-year vision and bank partnerships
About Kanishk Sasikumar:
Kanishk is a senior at Bentonville High School and co-founder of Investo, a financial literacy app he built with co-founder Arjun. The app placed sixth at DECA’s international competition and launched in April.
🔗 Kanishk on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanishk-sasikumar/
🔗 Investo website: https://investo-finance.xyz/
🎧 Follow the Startup Junkies Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
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