In 2023, during my penultimate year of high school, I co-founded and led (as 'CEO') a biotech start-up called 'Volution'. We were a team of 9 students building affordable, portable, user-friendly air-allergen monitors that would help warn people with allergies and asthma when particulate matter (or allergen concentration) rose to potentially dangerous levels.
I initially came up with this idea, as I'm an asthmatic and my condition worsens significantly when there is a high amount of dust. One night I had a small asthma attack while trying to sleep and was annoyed that I couldn't know that there were higher amounts of dust in my room in order to do something and avoid it.
We raised some capital by selling school merchandise at our Christmas fair, and this was just enough to bootstrap buying components and building.
We bought raw electronics components and chips which we soldered and programmed in our school's engineering lab. Then, we were fortunate enough to borrow a 3D printer where we designed the case of our product using CAD and printed it. This helped keep our production cheap and simple. In short, we used the RP2040 microcontroller IC and the high-grade GP2Y1014AU optical dust sensor to detect PM2.5 particulate matter including common allergens such as dust, mould, and pollen. An LED was programmed to light up red when a specific threshold of particulate matter concentration was met.
In the end, we managed to sell 5 of our products by pitching to consumers and investors at trade fairs, including big ones like at Spitalfields Markets in London. We also got recognition from the VP of RS Components, who was impressed with our work (and added us on LinkedIn!). as well as the CEO of Empact Ventures, who wanted to enter us into their startup competition in order to win funding (before he realised we were under 18...).
We did this technically challenging project (which none of us had much experience in) during an academically intense period of high school, which was quite stressful. However, I loved every second of it as I learnt huge amounts of electronics, CAD, project management, and leadership which I can carry with me forever.