How Philippine entrepreneurship competition YouthHack went global

YouthHack founder David Ongchoco launched YouthHack Manila in 2014, with the aim of encouraging students to take the entrepreneurial path.

With its skilled and English-speaking workforce, large tech-savvy population, high literacy rate, and competitive labor costs, one would expect the Philippines to be a natural breeding ground for entrepreneurs. But most Filipinos don’t possess an entrepreneurial mindset.

19-year-old David Ongchoco wants to change that. He believes key in encouraging Filipinos to create their own businesses is to expose them to the idea at a young age.

Together with friends Michelle Abigan, Deondre Ng, Janelle Panganiban, and Myka Cue, he set up YouthHack, an organization that aims to help students learn more about startups, technology, and entrepreneurship. YouthHack holds startup challenges and hackathons for high school and university students.

“We hope to create a community of bright young minds and inspire them to really take action upon their ideas. We want them to develop the ‘YouthHack’ mindset, which is about taking risks, thinking differently, getting things done, finding solutions to everyday problems,” Ongchoco told Tech in Asia.

Education gap

Ongchoco is an incoming sophomore college student at the University of Pennsylvania. He had his lightbulb moment while applying for colleges in the US. During the process, he came across many events for entrepreneurs such as business plan competitions, hackathons, and startup weekends.

“I wondered why there weren’t as many opportunities like those in the Philippines for students to get involved in,” he recalled.

So when he returned to the Philippines in summer of 2014, he set up YouthHack to fill the gap.

YouthHack held its first two-day event, the YouthHack Manila Technopreneurship Challenge, on July 12-13 of that same year at the Gates Professional Schools, with over 100 students in attendance. The event featured a forum and a workshop, as well as mentoring, networking, and idea pitching sessions. The students got the opportunity to hear from the likes of IdeaSpace president and co-founder Earl Valencia, Kalibrr co-founder Paul Rivera, and entrepreneur Jojy Azurin.

This year, it’s happening again. On July 25 and 26, Ongchoco’s group will hold the YouthHack Manila Startup Challenge at Xavier School.

What’s more, a YouthHack Manila Code Weekend will be held July 11-12 at Microsoft’s Philippines headquarters, where engineers from startups will give workshops on how to build a website or app. The workshops will be followed by a hackathon, where students will build their own platforms.

“Through the code weekend, we hope to kickstart the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education here in the Philippines, help build tech talent here, and equip the youth with technical skills,” Ongchoco explained.