He Sold Lemonade, Then Jerseys. Then He Asked 50 People First.

Kavi Kumar-Warikoo is 17, and he's been selling things for about as long as he can remember.

He sold lemonade along Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on car-free Sundays. By fifth grade, he was printing and selling custom T-shirts. Then came snow shoveling, babysitting, sneaker reselling, and car detailing. This past summer, he and a friend bought soccer jerseys from overseas and sold them on the streets of Boston to World Cup fans.

"I'm just always thinking about the next thing," he told Cambridge Day.

But the most interesting part of his story isn't how many things he's sold. It's what changed when he tried to build an app with a team. Before writing a single line of code, they talked to about 50 people.

The app didn't win the big competition at the end. And Kavi says he learned more from it than from any lemonade stand.

An app called Newsreel that would give short news videos a political bias rating.

Kavi noticed something about how he and his friends got their news. A lot of it came from short videos on social media. And the more videos he watched, the stranger they got.

"If I saw a video about maybe more of a theory than an actual fact, a few videos later, it might be something that's even more of a theory, and then the next video might be like a full-on conspiracy theory," he said.

He'd bring things he saw online to the dinner table, and his parents would push back. "I was kind of conflating it with the real stuff," he admitted. (Conflating means mixing two things up.)

So his idea was simple to explain: rate news videos for bias, the way a site called Ground News already does for written articles. Kids could see at a glance whether a video leaned one way.

He was the team's CEO and its chief technology officer, which means he led the business and also built the tech.

Because your idea is a guess until real people tell you it solves their problem.

This is the step most young founders skip. It's also the step real startups use all the time. It's called customer research or customer interviews.

Kavi's team interviewed roughly 50 people. Friends. Classmates. Even an uncle who writes for the Detroit Free Press, a big newspaper.

Here's why that matters. When you have an idea, it feels obviously great. Your brain fills in all the gaps. But other people might:

• Not have the problem at all.
• Have the problem but not care enough to fix it.
• Already use something else that works fine.
• Want a totally different version than you imagined.

Fifty conversations is a lot. Even 10 good ones can save you weeks of building the wrong thing.

Pick a problem, find 10 people who might have it, and ask about their past, not their opinions.

Here's a kid-sized version you can do this weekend.

1. Write the problem in one sentence. "Kids my age can't tell if a news video is true." Or "My little brother's soccer team never has enough water bottles."
2. List 10 people who might have that problem. Classmates, cousins, neighbors, teammates. A parent should help pick safe people to talk to.
3. Ask about what already happened. Good: "Tell me about the last time you saw a video you weren't sure about." Not so good: "Would you use my app?" People are nice and will say yes.
4. Listen more than you talk. Try to talk less than a third of the time.
5. Write down exact words. If three people use the same phrase, that's a clue.
6. Look for patterns. After 10 talks, what came up again and again?

Kids can track interview notes in a notebook, a shared doc, or Foundra's kids guides, which help young founders plan and organize a business idea. A simple paper chart works too.

[IMAGE: A kid's notebook page with a simple table: name, problem, what they do now, exact quote] Alt text: Handwritten customer interview notes table for a kid's business idea Caption: Four columns are enough to spot a pattern.

That working with people is different from working through them.

Kavi was used to doing everything himself. Lemonade, shirts, sneakers, jerseys. He had an idea, and he went and did it.

A team changed that. His teammates had schoolwork and other activities. He had to coordinate, wait, compromise, and depend on others.

His dad, Ramesh, who started a health technology company called Zaki Point Health, noticed the shift. Before Newsreel, Kavi's attitude was "okay, I will go and do this, and I can do this." This time, there were frustrations.

Ramesh put the lesson this way: "There's a difference between working with people and just working through them."

That's a sentence worth repeating at your dinner table. Working through people means treating them like tools to get your plan done. Working with people means their ideas and time matter too. Kavi called it "real world experience, not just doing a group project."

Yes. Most first projects don't win, and the skills carry forward.

Kavi's team built a working prototype. That's a big deal for high schoolers. But they didn't win the final pitch competition in May, and he's put Newsreel on hold.

Here's what he kept:

• A more organized way to test ideas (his dad noticed this too).
• Experience leading a team.
• A clearer idea of what he wants to do next.

Now in his senior year at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, he created a new role in the school's business club: head of entrepreneurial ventures. His job is to help other students take their ideas from first thought to marketing and pitching.

So a project that "lost" turned into a way to help other kids start. That's not failure. That's a pivot.

Programs like TiE Young Entrepreneurs help, and a lot of it can be practiced at home.

Kavi learned these lessons in the TiE Young Entrepreneurs Academy, called TYE. TiE stands for The Indus Entrepreneurs, a group founded in Silicon Valley in 1992 to help founders support each other. TYE started in Boston 22 years ago and now runs in about 32 cities.

It's an eight-month program where teams of three to five high school students build a startup with help from mentors, then pitch to judges in May. The Boston program costs $2,400, with need-based scholarships available. Applications for this year closed October 12.

But you don't need a program to practice the core skills. Kavi's earliest lessons came from a lemonade stand. The interviews, the teamwork, and the pivot can all happen with friends and a notebook.

Use these at dinner or in the car.

• What problem do you notice that bugs you or your friends?
• Who are 10 people we could ask about it?
• What's one question you could ask that isn't "would you buy this?"
• Have you ever done a group project where someone worked "through" people instead of "with" them? How did it feel?
• If your first idea doesn't work, what could you learn from it?
• Where do you get most of your news? How do you know if it's true?

Who is Kavi Kumar-Warikoo? He's a 17-year-old senior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Massachusetts. He's run many small businesses and led a team that built Newsreel, an app to rate bias in short news videos, through TiE Boston's Young Entrepreneurs Academy.

What is customer research for kids? It means talking to real people about a problem before building a product. Kids ask about past experiences, take notes, and look for patterns to see if their idea is worth making.

How many people should a kid interview about a business idea? Ten good conversations is a solid start. Kavi's team talked to about 50. Stop when you keep hearing the same answers.

What is TiE Young Entrepreneurs? It's an eight-month program for high school students to build startups with mentors, ending in a pitch competition. It started in Boston and runs in about 32 cities.

What if my kid's first business idea fails? That's normal. Help them list what they learned and what they'd try next. Many founders, including Kavi, turn early projects into new opportunities.

How can kids spot bias in news videos? Compare the same story from several sources, check who made the video, and ask whether it states facts or opinions. Talking it over with a parent helps too.

1. Cambridge teen graduates from lemonade stands to startups, Cambridge Day, October 7, 2026
2. TiE Young Entrepreneurs Boston
3. The Genesis of TiE, TiE Global
4. Ground News