We were really excited to hear about Andrew B., a 17 year-old High School student and Udacian. As part of a team of six, he recently launched Perfect Menu and was featured in TechCrunch — congrats!
Amazingly, Andrew’s only formal education in programming was from Udacity’s Intro to Computer Science (CS101) that he took as part of Da Vinci’s Lab, an initiative that has empowered high school students to take these college-level courses (thank you, Kevin English!). As Andrew shared, he has been focusing his current studies in math and computer sciences and wants to pursue long-term careers in these areas.
And as for his CS101 experience, Andrew stated, “Udacity has helped me structure the way that I program. Before I took the course, I had a very chaotic way of programming. Udacity really helped with this.”
With that background, a few weeks ago Andrew participated at StartUp Weekend, in Bend, Oregon. At first he was hesitant, but at the last minute he decided to go and ended up meeting Aviv. Aviv came to the competition with a clear idea of Perfect Menu and wanted to form a team around this idea. At the end of the weekend, their team won admittance to Founders Pad accelerator session. Not only did they see success at the end of the competition, but by the end of the weekend they also had their first paying customer!
Andrew is surprised by how the company has taken off but is very proud of the team’s accomplishment thus far and hopes the company will continue to grow. Currently, he and the Perfect Menu team are enrolled in Udacity’s How to Build a Startup: the Lean LaunchPad course taught by Steve Blank. Andrew is continuing his education with Udacity and is also enrolled in our Software Debugging course. We will continue to follow Andrew’s story and wish the entire Perfect Menu team great success in all their endeavors!
Andrew’s story is a great example of a Udacity student that has taken charge of his own future and education. And if you are a Udacian that has a success story to share, please email us!
