In the heart of Silicon Valley, an extraordinary educational experiment is unfolding at The Harker School, a prestigious private K-12 institution in San Jose, California. Founded in 1893, Harker has long been a magnet for the children of tech luminaries — including the son of Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev and, until her 2024 graduation, the daughter of Zoom founder Eric Yuan. Now, the school is giving select high school seniors something rare even in the adult VC world: the power to write real $25,000 checks to startups.
Launched in 2025, Harker's Venture Investment Initiative (also known as the Harker Venture Pool) lets a handful of chosen students act as de facto managing partners of a real investment fund.
The vehicle is funded by a $10 million endowment gift from Harker alumnus Neil Mehta, founder of Greenoaks Capital Partners. A portion of the endowment's annual distributions flows into the pool, enabling the program to deploy meaningful capital.
A Rigorous Selection and Real Responsibility
Each year, only about six seniors are selected as Mehta Scholars. These students undergo specialized coursework in corporate finance and venture capital offered by the school.
Once in the program, they take on full due diligence responsibilities: sourcing deals (primarily startups founded by Harker alumni), analyzing financial models, assessing founder quality, evaluating market traction, and writing detailed investment memos.
The process is far from theoretical. One scholar spent roughly six months reviewing dozens of potential investments, diving deep into AI financial models and founder leadership profiles before committing to a Canadian AI-powered mortgage financing startup. Weekends — including full Sundays — are often consumed by the work.
Before any check is cut, proposals are vetted by an advisory board of seasoned investors from top-tier firms like Redpoint Ventures, TSVC, and even HSBC. The final decision rests with the students, who sign off on $25,000 investments.
While $25,000 is modest in VC terms and unlikely to make or break a startup, it provides genuine skin in the game. Any returns generated flow back to the school's endowment — students receive no personal financial upside — but the experience is invaluable.
Shifting Perspectives and Real-World Lessons
The program reshapes how these teenagers think about investing. One scholar initially chased only the "latest, most breakthrough technologies," viewing them as the only path to outsized returns.
After real diligence and board feedback, she shifted toward companies that had already achieved some market validation and held even small competitive edges — recognizing that pure moonshots can be excessively risky.
Advisors note that student investors often bring a fresh, qualitative lens — emphasizing founder quality, vision, and team dynamics over pure metrics — sometimes influencing even veteran VCs on the board.
For founders pitching these 17- and 18-year-olds, the dynamic can feel unusual. Yet many embrace it, seeing the Harker network as a valuable early validator and potential future source of talent or follow-on capital.
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Why This Matters in Silicon Valley
Harker’s initiative reflects the unique ecosystem of the Valley, where wealth, alumni networks, and entrepreneurial culture intersect. By giving students hands-on VC experience — sourcing, diligence, negotiation, portfolio monitoring — the program prepares them not just for elite colleges (many aim for Wharton or similar) but for potential future roles as founders, operators, or investors.
In an era when venture capital remains an opaque, relationship-driven industry, Harker is demystifying it early. For the children of tech executives and entrepreneurs already immersed in the startup world, this isn't just extracurricular — it's accelerated immersion into the game that built their parents' fortunes.
As one advisor put it, the program isn't about turning high schoolers into professional VCs overnight. It's about teaching judgment, discipline, and the humility that comes from real capital allocation — lessons that will serve them long after graduation. In Silicon Valley, where the next generation is being groomed in boardrooms before they even leave high school, Harker School is writing a new chapter in elite education.
