A senior's venture, on Shark Tank Junior.

The cameras only catch the pitch. They don't catch the eight months of customer interviews, the four scrapped product iterations, or the night before the flight when Elias and his co-founder rebuilt the entire deck because their unit economics didn't survive a second look.

That's the part we want students to write home about. The pitch is theater; the work is real.

Elias didn't win. He came home with three letters of intent from independent retailers and a clearer thesis on his market. That, in our view, is a win that compounds.