Kavi Kumar is only 17, but has been an entrepreneur for almost as long as he can remember.
Growing up in Cambridge, he sold lemonade along Memorial Drive on car-free Sundays. By fifth grade, he was printing and selling custom T-shirts. Snow shoveling, babysitting, sneaker wholesaling and car detailing followed. This summer, anticipating an influx of World Cup fans, he and a friend sourced soccer jerseys from overseas.
“Me and him sold jerseys on the streets of Boston, and we made pretty good money,” Kumar said. “I’m just always thinking about the next thing.”
But even after years of running his own businesses, the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School senior discovered he still had plenty to learn when he enrolled in TiE Boston’s Young Entrepreneurs Academy, or TYE, last year. Kumar had wanted to join the program since watching his older sister participate years earlier and had previously attended a TiE business camp for middle school students.
TiE, short for The Indus Entrepreneurs, was founded in Silicon Valley in 1992 by a group of predominantly Indian entrepreneurs seeking to support one another through networking and mentorship. The organization has since expanded beyond its South Asian roots, and its Young Entrepreneurs Academy is open to high school students of all backgrounds.
The eight-month program, which was founded in Boston 22 years ago and has since expanded to roughly 32 cities worldwide, brings together high school students from across Greater Boston to develop startups under the guidance of experienced entrepreneurs, culminating in a May competition where they pitch their businesses to judges.
Kumar led a team developing Newsreel, an app designed to assign political bias ratings to short-form news videos, similar to what Ground News does with articles. He came up with the idea after realizing how much news he and his friends consumed through social media, where recommendation algorithms can lead users toward increasingly questionable information.
“Social media shows you what you want to see. It’s like an echo chamber. I saw a big problem with that,” Kumar said. “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.”
From idea to prototype
Kumar recalled bringing things he’d encountered online to the family dinner table, only to have his parents challenge their accuracy. “I was kind of conflating it with the real stuff,” he said.
Suspecting other teenagers had similar experiences, Kumar and his teammates interviewed roughly 50 people, including friends and an uncle who writes for the Detroit Free Press, before developing their product.
That research reflects TYE’s hands-on approach, which emphasizes identifying problems and testing solutions before building a business. According to Adam Carter, TiE Boston’s director of programs, teams of three to five students work with mentors and industry professionals.
Learning to lead
As Newsreel’s CEO and chief technology officer, Kumar was responsible for developing the app while coordinating with teammates juggling schoolwork and other commitments. Creating Newsreel required him to rely on others. “I got that leadership experience before even graduating high school,” Kumar said. “That’s like a real world experience, not just doing a group project or something.”
Kumar’s team developed a working prototype, but it did not win the final competition, and he has since put Newsreel on hold.
But his father, Ramesh, himself an entrepreneur and founder of healthcare technology company Zaki Point Health, said he has noticed two major changes in his son: a more systematic approach to developing business ideas and a newfound understanding of collaboration.
“Prior to [Newsreel], he was very much, ‘okay, I will go and do this, and I can do this.’ But this time round, there were frustrations,” Ramesh said. He thinks those frustrations taught his son an important distinction: “There’s a difference between working with people and just working through them.”
Bringing entrepreneurship to CRLS
Now in his senior year, Kumar said he is applying those lessons at CRLS. He’s created a new leadership position, head of entrepreneurial ventures, within the school’s business club, where he plans to help classmates develop their own business ideas, from initial concepts to marketing and pitching. “I’m leading a space where students, if they have an idea of a business or something they want to create, I’m gonna basically help them do it,” Kumar said.
Kumar acknowledged that growing up in Cambridge has afforded him opportunities that young entrepreneurs elsewhere might not have. However, Carter, TiE Boston’s director of programs, said proximity to Harvard, MIT and the city’s startup community doesn’t guarantee that local public school students can access those resources.
“I have a feeling that a lot of the students here aren’t really exposed to that,” Carter said. TYE, which costs $2,400 but offers need-based scholarships, aims to address that problem. “Our program can really help kind of bridge that gap,” he said.
Applications for TiE Boston’s 2026-27 Young Entrepreneurs Academy are open through Oct. 12, according to Carter. The program begins in October and meets on alternating Saturdays in Cambridge’s Kendall Square. Interested high school students can apply online.
Looking ahead, Kumar hopes to attend Tufts University, where his older sister is currently a political science student, and eventually launch another business, perhaps using artificial intelligence to make business operations more efficient.
What appeals to him most about entrepreneurship, he said, is the freedom to set his own hours, be his own boss and — maybe — become as rich as Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.
A stronger
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