Even though he’s still a teenager, Rajat Bhageria is uniquely positioned to talk about entrepreneurship and the skills that help us to succeed in our lives after high school. He is the founder and CEO of ThirdEye Technologies, a startup that helps the visually impaired through object recognition from auditory feedback. He is also the author of What High School Didn’t Teach Me, a book he wrote during the summer before his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is studying in both Wharton and the engineering school. Bhageria recently sat down with KWHS interviewer Nithya Kasi, a Wharton freshman, to talk about his business and the value of learning for the sake of learning, not just to get an “A.”
https://youtu.be/hXAtXJZHZoc
Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.
Knowledge@Wharton High School (KWHS): Let's discuss your latest entrepreneurial endeavor. How did you come up with the idea to provide visual assistance to the blind?
Rajat Bhageria: The reason that we started ThirdEye is that all [our] co-founders really believe in doing something with massive impact -- something that can literally change the lives of people by 10 times. That's our metric: 10 times. We don't want to build something or work on something that offers 10% increments and less. Just watching visually impaired people, everything they do, they're dependent on others. They consistently have to ask for help [with] things that you and I take for granted, like recognizing between [different denominations of] money or recognizing that you're eating soup and you need to put the spoon inside, to recognizing that this is a Coke bottle, this is a water bottle. [These are] things that we take for granted, but they're really difficult for some people. We couldn't imagine life like that. So we believed that changing this group's lives would lead us to have a big impact in the world.
KWHS: How did that inspiration turn into wanting to actually start the company? And what stage is ThirdEye Technologies in these days?
Bhageria: It is a pretty simple story. We actually started at the PennApps Hackathon, [an event where people who are excited about programming come together for a weekend and work together to build new things]. It was just three close friends. We had met in some of our computer classes. We didn't have any company idea in mind, we were just like, “Let's build something." We got our hands on [the wearable technology] Google Glass, and we were like, OK, let's build something to help the blind. [Their creation is software running on Google Glass that tells the visually impaired what they are looking at.] We ended up doing really well at the hackathon. As a result of that, a bunch of investors in the Philly/New York areas, and also advisors, were like, “Hey, you guys should potentially consider doing this full time. (Well, of course during school.) Take it to the next level.”
We didn't think there was any opportunity cost to that. We're students. We're paying a ton of money to go to this school already. We're paying rent. [We figured], what do we have to lose? The only thing that can happen is [we learn something], even if we fail. That’s the mindset we had going in. It's been a phenomenal journey. I've learned so much about everything and anything, [including] managing my own psychology, because it is tremendously difficult working with a team. I learned how hard working with people and managing people actually is. I've learned how to do basic finance accounting, and how to, of course, design more software. [I’ve also learned how] to get [attention from the press] and everything else. These are all things that will be helpful later on in life. ThirdEye's at a really good place right now.
KWHS: So, more about your book, What High School Didn't Teach Me. What prompted you to write it?
Bhageria: I think this will resonate with all students. I went through the [high school] system, just taking it all in.
