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 Banerjee was 12 years old when he closed an early-stage funding
round with Intel Capital, the company's venture capital arm, last
month for his prototype for a low-cost Braille printer. Since then,
the San Jose, California middle-schooler has turned 13.
That's young, even by the standards of Silicon Valley, where many
venture capitalists unapologetically prefer to fund youth over
experience.
Young entrepreneurs usually have reached at least their mid-teens
when they hit it big. Nick D'Aloisio, founder of online news
aggregator Summly, was 17 when Yahoo bought his company last year
for $30 million.
Brothers John and Patrick Collison, behind payments service Stripe,
were 16 and 19 when they sold an earlier business to a Canadian
company for $5 million.
After reading a fundraising flyer about the blind, Banerjee felt
inspired to turn a high-tech version of Legos, the toy building
blocks, into a device that could print in Braille. One day, he wants
to mass-produce the printers and sell them for about $350, far less
than Braille printers cost now.
This past summer, he worked on incorporating an Intel Edison chip, a
processor aimed at hobbyists, into the printer. In September, Intel
invited him to a conference in India to highlight uses for Edison.
There, he got a big surprise.
Intel executive Mike Bell announced from the conference stage that
the giant chipmaker would invest in his company, Braigo Labs. Until
then, his funding consisted of the $35,000 his parents gave him.
"I turned back to my dad, and said, 'What did he just say?'"
Banerjee recalled. "I was all over the place."
Banerjee and a spokesman for Intel Capital declined to disclose the
size of the investment. A person familiar with the matter said it
was a few hundred thousand dollars. He plans to use it to build a
better prototype of the printer and test it with more groups for the
blind.
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After the announcement, Banerjee had to bone up on unfamiliar terms
such as "venture capital."
He also needed to convince adults to co-sign his funding and patent
documents. Among the company officials he turned to: Braigo's
president, his mom, Malini.
Banerjee says he gets mostly As and Bs as a student at the Champion
School in San Jose, California. Teachers have given him time off to
attend events like the conference in India and the Intel Global
Capital summit this week in Huntington Beach, California. He catches
up on school work on weekends, he says.
This is the second Intel investment connected to the Banerjee
family. His dad, Neil, works for Kno, an education start-up that
Intel bought last year.
While many young entrepreneurs who win venture-capital cash end up
ditching their education to focus on their businesses full time,
Banerjee says he won't take that path.
"It's an after-school thing," he says.
(Story corrects Nov 4,2014 copy to delete words "in India" and
replaces with "in San Francisco" in paragraph 7).
(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and David Gregorio)
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