It all started in the summer of 2017 when I still went to an outdoor day camp. This was a particularly hot summer and there was no relief. My birthday had just come and gone and before I left to go to camp, my parents got me an Air Hogs helicopter, a small RC helicopter.

One day, I came home with a completely sweat-through shirt and took out my Air Hogs to play with. I held the helicopter far away from my face and turned it on. It blew a great breeze onto me and sparked an idea. 14 year old me decided to tear down my beloved helicopter and take out the propeller, electric motor, and battery, taping it all to a blue plastic straw I stole from the kitchen.

This was in no way an elegant design, but it worked -and worked well.

I went to camp the following day with my straw fan in hand, ready to beat the summer heat.

My fellow campers and even my counselors saw my device and wanted one of their own. At first, I was apprehensive to sell something I made because a) I didn't have enough helicopters to dismantle and b) I didn't know the first thing about business. By the end of the camp day, I concluded that I would make them and sell them for $7 each, but because I didn't have enough of my own Air Hogs, I made it part of the deal that if you donated your own Air Hogs helicopter, I would charge $5 instead, solving my inventory issue.

That summer, I worked harder than I had before, producing and selling over 25 fans to campers, counselors, and even someone's mom.

I learned a lot about the basic challenges of marketing your ideas, the difficulty of customer satisfaction, and how engineering helps people.