A team of student entrepreneurs from Naperville, striving to make traveling easier, was among the finalists in a national competition.
During INCubator EDU’s National Pitch Night, five businesses made up of high school students from around the country pitched their products and services to a panel of startup business investors in Chicago, with hopes of winning additional funding for their companies.
Pitching an easier way to travel
The local team, consisting of Naperville North High School students Noah Wrodarczyk, Bremen Dinh, and Aayush Thakkar, created Roam Travel. Their main product, the Roam Link, is an adjustable strap that secures backpacks, duffle bags, and other personal items to a traveler’s carry-on luggage.
“We realized that a lot of people in the travel industry face problems with back pain or stress, or carrying many bags,” said Thakkar. “Essentially what our Roam Link does is it relieves the stress. You can carry multiple bags just with one suitcase, with one handle.”
“We’re pitching with the best incubator teams in the country,” said Noah Wrodarczyk, CEO for Roam Travel. “We’re seeing real sales, we’re seeing real marketing, and to be able to see these other teams and be on the same stage as them and talk with them, it was a very fun experience.”
Getting down to Business INCubator
The group developed the product as part of the Business INCubator course at Naperville North High School. The year-long class tasks teams of high school students with creating a product or service as a response to a real-world problem, learning about entrepreneurship and business skills in the process. Business professionals volunteer their time as coaches and mentors.
“We had to basically run our business with filing legal paperwork, putting our tech packs – CAD designs- out while also in the process of preparing for our pitch,” said Dinh. “It just taught us overall about working under pressure as well as how to work as a team.”
Naperville School District 203 has been with the national INCubator program since its inception in 2017. This year 60 teams from Naperville Central and Naperville North participated in the program. Of them, six went on to compete against each other in a local Final Pitch Night in May, with Roam Travel coming out on top, winning a $3,000 prize they reinvested back into their company.
An invaluable experience
Roam applied for the national competition and qualified. While they ended up not receiving any additional money, the experience, the students say, was just as valuable, showing off their product to other business professionals in a trade show following the pitches.
“People all over the business were coming up to our table and talking about where they’re from and what they’re up to. We got feedback. We also got invited to some trade shows in California. We got invited to another pitch competition. We also did collect some pre-orders from customers,” said Wrodarczyk. “We have a lot of opportunities that just came from that one hour of sitting at our trade show table and just talking to people, whether it’s customers or other entrepreneurs.”
A first for District 203
This team was the first from District 203 to make it to the national top five.
“That says a lot because of the outstanding students and teams that we’ve had in the district,” said Nolan. “What they’ve demonstrated and to see the growth that they’ve had from the first day that they walked into class, these skills of teamwork, collaboration, problem-solving, grit, resilience. Those are things that no matter what they do from here when they graduate, they’re going to be using those skills and those skills that these students have that are so advanced at this age. That’s the thing that we’re most proud of.”
Future plans for the students
The students behind Roam Travel say they want to keep their business going.
“It’s not just a school project for us anymore and it hasn’t been for a long time,” said Wrodarczyk. “It’s evolved into something that can turn into a real business that can help real people.”
Two of the students, Wrodarczyk and Thakkar, will go on to take the Business Accelerator course while Dinh is a recent graduate who plans to study business at Indiana University.
If you have a story idea, we want to hear from you!
