On Sept. 21, Harker hosted the Silicon Valley Youth Regional competition of the 2024 Startup World Cup, a world-spanning startup competition with regional events in nearly 50 countries, culminating in a Grand Finale that took place in San Francisco earlier this month.  The event invited students from Bay Area high schools to pitch their companies to a panel of judges comprised of Poshmark founder and CEO Manish Chandra, Sequoia Capital partner Sonya Huang, TCVA founding partner Eugene Zhang and Black Rock managing director Rui Zhao. Student founders also ran tables and answered questions about their products for attendees of the event. The winning startup was Shlurp Ramen, founded by Harker seniors Naiya Daswani and Emily Mitnick and Siddhi Jain ’24, who were awarded $1,000 in funding and advanced to the next stage of the competition. Over the summer, Shlurp was also named a winner in the 2024 INCubatoredu National Pitch Competition, winning $5,000 in funding.