After four minutes of spirited voting, Jenny Abramson, the founder of the Patty Abramson Social Venture Lab, known as the Hopper Tank, took the stage to announce the winner of the program’s fourth annual competition. Silence fell over the lower/middle school flex performance space. “Here’s the deal,” Abramson said. “This has never happened in the history of the Patty Abramson Social Venture Lab.”
Some crowd members began murmuring as they realized what was about to be said. “It’s a perfect tie,” Abramson announced. The room erupted into chaos. The shouting only got louder as Abramson brought out a novelty oversized check addressed to the two winners: ThriveSpace and CraftGenius. ThriveSpace is a mental health app and Craft Genius is an arts and crafts subscription box. Each group receives a 1000-dollar investment for their start-up companies.
On Friday, Feb. 8, GDS middle school advisories and a handful of outside investors—retired lawyer Charles R. Both, Little Folks School Head James Gilroy, pediatric dentist Anu Tate, and financial lawyer Melanie Nussdorf—all selected by Abramson, voted for ThriveSpace and CraftGenius to win. The two winners beat the two other finalists, Great Minds and Jolly Journal. In last week’s preliminary round, a group of GDS faculty chose the teams to advance to Friday’s final four. (Julia Fisher, the Bit’s faculty advisor, was a preliminary round faculty judge.)
Before the final presentations began, the entrepreneurs watched apprehensively as hundreds of middle schoolers streamed into the lower/middle school flex performance space. Sophomore Matias Sevak, who spoke for Great Minds on Friday, said he felt “a little nervous but confident.”
After the presentations, representatives from each advisory rushed down the flex performance space’s stairs to cast their votes. Then the wait began. Middle school students became restless, some even shouting and stomping in anticipation of the results. Abramson emerged from backstage and urgently conferred with her father, Les Silverman, who was also an outside investor, about the unprecedented result. “We thought about just splitting the 1000 dollars, but that seems sort of lame,” Abramson told the audience. “Then we thought about picking who seemed nicer, but that seemed weird.” Abramson then said if outside investors would give an extra 1000 dollars, they would be able to have “two winners.”
Abramson opened this year’s finals by thanking middle school faculty members and introducing the Hopper Tank heads: seniors Laila Bapna, Nora Sachse and Grace Zia. “We are so thrilled to lead a program that was created to honor the amazing work of Patty Abramson,” Zia said. Patty Abramson, mother of Jenny Abramson, was a successful venture capitalist who died in 2019; the venture lab was created in honor of her. Bapna then outlined the three most important criteria for judges to consider: if the company will actually work, if it’s financially sustainable and if the presentation was clear and compelling.
The two runner-up teams, Jolly Journal and Great Minds, focused on positive alternative media and affordable middle school tutoring, respectively.
One of the winning teams, CraftGenius, created by freshmen Ella Maas—daughter of Jenny Abramson—Eila Priestap and Ellie Snyder, presented first. Their company provides a subscription box to preschoolers filled with arts and crafts. For every box purchased, one box is donated to families in need through Martha’s Table. The team also has an advisory board, with members including Gilroy and Fabio Segura, co-CEO of the Jacobs Foundation, a Swiss education foundation. Gilroy was also a voting investor.
Although the vast majority of votes came from middle school students—80-90 percent according to Abramson—all parents of the contestants could attend and vote for a team to win. Abramson told the Bit that to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, Maas and Abramson’s family members abstained from voting because Maas was a finalist. “I purposely didn’t have anyone who was connected to [Maas] vote,” said Abramson. “I actually was super cautious about it.”
ThriveSpace—the other winning team—created by sophomores Didi Pathiyal and Lulu Wachs and juniors Charlotte Lee and Henry Wachs, is a mental health app that uses video games to reduce stress and anxiety. Lulu Wachs mentioned how stressful the major eighth grade Constitutional Issue Paper can be. “Trust me, Charlotte, Henry, Didi and I have been through it all,” Wachs said. (Didi Pathiyal is an opinions editor for the Bit and did not read nor edit this article prior to publication.)
In an interview with the Bit, when asked if the investors knew they were going to be contributing an extra 1000 dollars, Abramson said, while laughing, “They did not. I figured I’d pitch in some, and hope that when we shared the news people would step up, and they did.”