funding & grants

I'll be honest: I haven't done any formal funding programs. no Thiel Fellowship, no Emergent Ventures, no 1517, no Z Fellows. the only money I've made from building is hackathon prizes.

here's what that actually looks like.

what I've actually earned

hackathon prizes

$1500 — 1st place at TRAE Solo Hackathon (Oct 2025)
various smaller wins at AGI House, an AI company's hackathon event

that's it. that's the financial outcome so far. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

why I haven't pursued formal funding

a few reasons:

I haven't needed it yet. the free stack (Vercel, Cloudflare, Supabase, GitHub Education) means you can build and deploy products for $0. see tools-stack for the full breakdown. I haven't hit a point where money was the bottleneck.
the projects I've built haven't been "fundable" in the traditional sense. hackathon projects, research, tools for myself — these aren't venture-scale businesses (yet).
I'm not anti-funding, I just haven't had the right thing to fund. applying for funding without a clear use for the money is a waste of everyone's time.

programs I'm aware of but haven't done

I'm not going to write detailed guides on programs I haven't experienced. but these are the ones I know about through my network:

Thiel Fellowship: $200k over 2 years to skip/leave college and build. ~15 fellows/year. the most prestigious young builder fellowship. managed by 1517 Fund.
Emergent Ventures (Tyler Cowen): 1k-50k grants, minimal strings attached. reportedly fast process. 13+ eligible. this is probably the most accessible one for young builders.
1517 Fund: VC fund backing founders without college degrees. also runs Medici Project ($1k grants for interesting projects).
Z Fellows: $10k + one week in SF with mentorship.
Hack Club grants: various grant programs for teen projects throughout the year. Hack Club is also one of the best communities for young builders.

if I end up doing any of these, I'll update this page with an honest account.

the practical reality of money as a teen builder

the legal stuff is annoying:

you can't sign contracts as a minor — parents may need to co-sign
bank accounts need to be custodial or have a parent on them
incorporating requires a parent or adult as director
grant income is taxable

the workarounds:

parent as legal wrapper: many teen founders have a parent as the technical officer/director. standard practice, investors are used to it.
fiscal sponsors: Hack Club Bank holds money legally and disburses it to you. useful for running events or receiving grants.

what I'd tell my past self

don't optimize for funding. build the thing. if it's good, the funding will follow. every funding application is 10x stronger if you have a working prototype with users. and the connections you make through the application process can be as valuable as the money.

and honestly — the free tier of modern dev tools is so generous that "I need money to build" is rarely true for software projects. the bottleneck is almost never money. it's time, skill, and knowing what to build. often a paid internship or hackathon prize is a more practical path to funding your work.