Events Archive

Empowering Young Entrepreneurs to Succeed – GH Goes to DECA

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High school kids rock. Especially the ones I had the pleasure of meeting last week at the Massachusetts State DECA Conference in downtown Boston. DECA is an organization that aims to empower young people to pursue careers in marketing, management, and entrepreneurship through education and leadership development events. 185,000 high schools students participate through 5,000 chapters across the U.S.

Along with my colleagues, Jeremy Butler (DECA alumni) and Jon Kay, I served as a judge in the Entrepreneurship category and Grasshopper donated scholarships for the top three participants in our category. The scholarships we gave will help out the winners of our category with travels costs for the DECA National conference. Over the course of three days, we each heard from between ten and fifteen groups of young entrepreneurs who pitched us their entrepreneurial ventures. Their businesses ranged from internet properties to landscaping companies and everything in between. The vast majority were outstanding.

We were also given the opportunity to do a couple of workshops on Friday afternoon. Jonathan presented on generating buzz and Jeremy and I teamed up for a workshop on the basics of ecommerce. The workshops were well received, but at that point I think our audience was ready to go to the pool or go shopping.

These were some of the most ambitious, smart, and outstanding young people I’ve met in a long time. When I was 18, I was, well, not doing anything close to what these kids are achieving. I was impressed by not only the events’ organization and production quality, but also by the sheer size. Read more »

Grasshopper Sponsored Dinner for Customers & Friends

Hi Customers & Friends,

I wanted to share with you a new initiative we are trying here at Grasshopper. It is called “Grasshopper Customers & Friends Dinner” (pretty straight forward right?). If you haven’t realized it yet we here at Grasshopper love interacting with our customers. Not only do we enjoy meeting new entrepreneurs, but some of our best business ideas have come directly from our customers.

If you have seen our “Friday Flix” you also know Grasshopper employees love good food (see Grilled Cheese Wednesday) and the occasional beer (coming soon – view of the office from Beer-Scooter Cam). So we thought, “What could we do to combine all of these things?” Hence, we arrived at “Grasshopper Sponsored Dinner”…because oh ya, everyone loves free things!

As we travel across America going to various conferences/business meetings, we are going to make an effort to have “Grasshopper Customers & Friends Dinners” along the way. Having said that, I leave you with 2 action items:

  1. If you live in the Greater Boston Area we have our first dinner this Thursday (Nov. 12th), 7:30 pm at Skipjacks Seafood in Newton, MA (on 55 Needham St.)

  2. RSVP here: http://ghdinner.eventbrite.com

  3. If you are not in the Boston Area but are interested in this sort of thing please note in the comments section what city you are near and we will try and reach out next time we are there!

Thanks so much, and hope to see you as SkipJack’s on Thursday.

Jonathan

** jkay@grasshopper.com with any questions comments, or concerns **