Wharton Global Youth Program
146 episodes listed below
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Future of the Business World is a monthly podcast from the Wharton Global Youth Program at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Future of the Business World features 20-minute conversations with teen entrepreneurs from around the world who are launching startups and products, and embracing the entrepreneurial mindset. Each month, Wharton Global Youth introduces you to a new teen innovator, discussing innovations, inspirations and their hopes for the future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Young founders explain the practical choices, experiments and tradeoffs that turn an early idea into a working venture.
Future of the Business World follows young founders from the first spark of an idea into the practical decisions that give it shape. Diana Drake keeps the interviews grounded in how ventures actually work, asking about pricing, partnerships, marketplaces, customer needs and the…
A grandma's 500-page Medicare binder becomes a founder's origin story; your excuses may need a rewrite.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A student macaron maker learns to price, track, and adapt before the sugar rush hides the margins.
A high school macaron maker turns a student business into a lesson in pricing, costs, and margins. Shaylee Chudasima walks through ingredients, delivery costs, fixed assets, Google Sheets, and the need to raise prices after egg prices spiked in 2023, so the conversation stays…
A student founder turns pickleball into a story about reach, logistics, and social purpose.
Ava Weissman's conversation with Diana Drake stays focused on a simple but workable idea: she loves pickleball enough to build Pickleball for a Purpose around it.
A glove shop on Instagram becomes a tight look at labor, liability, and collector culture.
The episode follows Ryan Pat, a Needham, Massachusetts senior at St. Sebastian's School, as he turns an Instagram baseball glove shop into a story about work, taste, and community.
A gap-year founder story that keeps the business mechanics visible.
Augustus Holm's interview lands best when Diana Drake moves past the personal setup and into the Medicare details behind it. The grandmother formularies-and-drug-tiers story gives the conversation a real anchor, turning broad startup talk into something concrete and useful.
A high school student frames food waste as a practical problem of reuse, distribution, and climate.
This episode follows a high school student thinking plainly and usefully about food waste. Kelly Zhang explains why discarded food matters, how organic leftovers can become compost or biofuel, and why getting it to the right place matters as much as cutting waste in the first…
A grounded look at how farmers markets are being organized for a more modern era.
This episode treats farmers markets as an operating problem as much as a weekend ritual, and that is where it finds its shape. Diana Drake gives Dylan DeLeon enough room to explain Fresh Cornucopia as a practical way to connect local shoppers with vendors, with the clearest…
Teen founders show how a sustainability idea becomes a working nonprofit.
Future of the Business World treats tennis sustainability as a practical lesson in how teen founders turn a simple idea into a real nonprofit.
A student founder's tea story that links flavor, farmers, and brand building.
Victoria Fang Gao's tea venture reads as a practical founder story grounded in Yunnan, with Diana Drake giving her room to explain how a new brand stays tied to the farmers and mountain landscape behind it.
Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.
Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.
Naval Ravikant on epistemology, startups, and crypto, from David Deutsch to Vitalik Buterin.
Alex Theuma interviews SaaS founders and investors on scaling to $10M-plus ARR.
Guy Raz traces founders' origin stories and fields live advice-line calls from entrepreneurs.
Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
Sai Matapali talks about Vital, the AI healthcare company he started.
Danielle Buchanan brings Cake Populous to the mic.
Diana Drake speaks with Sophie Buckshee about Choice Compass and the thinking behind its focus on women’s health and FemTech.
Host Diana Drake interviews Roxanne Goldman, a 16-year-old high school student with ADHD who launched StimStacked, a line of fidget jewelry designed to help with focus.
Cookies become a business classroom.
Chelsea Rojas turns a scholarship disappointment into a bigger question about financial education for young people in Latin America.
Teen entrepreneur Ava Weissman discusses her nonprofit Pickleball for a Purpose, which uses pickleball tournaments to foster intergenerational connections and combat loneliness.
Teen entrepreneur Alex Gelberbaum discusses founding the SED Project, a nonprofit that brings theater opportunities to underserved students through panels, Broadway show visits, and mentorships.
Diana Drake interviews Lucio Hightower-Rojas, a teen entrepreneur who founded Scholar Brilliance, an AI-driven platform to simplify scholarship applications.
Laura Abigail Cimbalone, a teen entrepreneur from Jakarta, discusses her organization Our Community, which upcycles textile waste into products like coasters while employing disabled artists.
Future of the Business World follows Ryan Pat, a Massachusetts high school senior who runs an Instagram shop built around baseball gloves.
Host Diana Drake interviews teen brothers Daniel and Matthew Persky, founders of SkyScouts, a system to predict and detect wildfires.
Diana Drake welcomes Augustus Holm and wraps up a year of conversations with high school entrepreneurs.
Kelly Zhang joins Diana Drake to talk about food waste and the climate problems tied to it.
Host Diana Drake interviews teen entrepreneur Dylan DeLeon about his startup Fresh Cornucopia, an online platform that modernizes farmer's markets through pre-orders.
Diana Drake welcomes Shreyas Gore and Ari Fain, the co-founders of Serve to Sustain, to discuss making tennis more sustainable.
This episode features Joe Louis Molina, a teen entrepreneur from Providence, Rhode Island, who discusses his junk removal business, That Junk Removal Company, and its social mission to clean up polluted neighborhoods.
Valentina Mariuzza, a teen bio-entrepreneur from Italy, discusses her journey creating nutritional gummy supplements for teenagers, starting as a school project.
Diana Drake interviews Victoria Fang Gao, a high school entrepreneur who developed Di Ling (True Forest) tea brand in Yunnan, China.
Diana Drake frames the conversation around Financial Literacy Month.
Noah Sheldon, a teen entrepreneur, discusses his nonprofit Inclusive Eats, which provides culturally diverse ingredients to food pantries.
Darsh Shah, a Silicon Valley high school senior, built Rising C-Suites, a youth-led consulting firm that helps student entrepreneurs scale their ideas.
Host Diana Drake interviews teen entrepreneur Rhea Rizzo, who started an Etsy shop at age 13 selling custom vinyl decals.
Carter Chang, a high school senior, shares how his mother's breast cancer diagnosis in September 2020 sparked a health and fitness journey that became a social enterprise.
Christina Kantamikulu, a senior at Shanghai American School, says a beach cleanup in Legrena, Greece, at age 10 pushed her toward entrepreneurship and social impact.
A high school entrepreneur from Puerto Rico shares his journey building a successful reselling business, discussing how he started with stickers and chips, scaled to $3,400 in 90 days on eBay, and learned key lessons about consumer psychology, supply chains, and the advantage of failing young.
Diana Drake interviews Sahana Ahuja, the teenage founder of the Launch Project, an international nonprofit that empowers girls through business, politics, and STEM education.