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+# funding & grants for young builders
+
+getting money as a teen builder is both easier and harder than you think. easier because there are more programs than ever specifically designed for young people. harder because you're a minor, which creates legal friction for everything from opening a bank account to signing contracts.
+
+## the big fellowships
+
+### Thiel Fellowship
+- **what:** $200,000 over 2 years (raised from $100k starting with the 2025 class) to skip/leave college and build something.
+- **eligibility:** 22 or younger. ~15 fellows selected annually.
+- **what they want:** you're building something that college would actively slow down. they're not anti-education — they're anti-opportunity-cost. if you're working on something where 2 years of focused building would be more valuable than 2 years of college, they want to fund that.
+- **honest take:** this is the most prestigious young builder fellowship, and the alumni network (11+ unicorns, $100B+ combined value) is unmatched. the application is more about what you're already doing than what you plan to do. if you haven't started building yet, this isn't for you. if you have a working product with users, it might be.
+- **managed by:** 1517 Fund (they run the application process)
+
+### 1517 Fund
+- **what:** venture fund specifically backing founders without college degrees. $100k-$1M investments at the earliest stages.
+- **honest take:** founded by former Thiel Fellowship directors. they genuinely believe in young builders and will invest at the idea stage if you're compelling enough. they also run the Medici Project — $1,000 cash grants for young people working on interesting projects. the Medici grants are a great low-barrier entry point.
+- **how to approach:** just email them. seriously. they're the most accessible VC fund for young people.
+
+### Emergent Ventures (Tyler Cowen / Mercatus Center)
+- **what:** $1k-$50k grants for people with "zero to one" ideas. no strings attached. minimal reporting.
+- **eligibility:** must be 13+. that's it. no citizenship requirement.
+- **honest take:** this might be the single best grant program for young builders. tyler cowen screens applications personally. the process is fast — you might get a zoom call the day after you apply. the money comes with almost no strings (one-page report after a year). 1000+ people funded so far across 41+ cohorts.
+- **what makes a good application:** specificity. "I want to build X and here's my progress so far" beats "I'm interested in X and want to explore it." show you've already started.
+- **recent teen winners:** high school students building running apps, deciphering ancient scripts, developing query optimizers. the bar is "doing something genuinely interesting," not "already successful."
+
+### Z Fellows
+- **what:** $10k + one week with a cohort in SF. mentorship from top Silicon Valley people.
+- **honest take:** good for early-stage exploration. the money isn't life-changing but the network access is. think of it as a one-week intensive boot camp for your idea.
+
+### Neo Scholars
+- **what:** mentorship community, startup accelerator, and VC fund by Ali Partovi. for undergrads who excel at CS.
+- **honest take:** more of a network play than a funding play. the mentorship and connections are the real value. competitive but less well-known than Thiel.
+
+## student VC funds
+
+### Dorm Room Fund
+- **what:** $90k-$250k uncapped SAFE checks for student founders. backed by First Round Capital.
+- **honest take:** the most legit student VC fund. they have investment partners at most major universities. 78% of alumni become founders or VCs. the catch: you need to be a current student at a US/Canadian university. high schoolers can't apply as founders, but knowing about it for college is useful.
+
+## grant programs
+
+### Hack Club grants
+- Hack Club runs various grant programs throughout the year for teen projects. check hackclub.com for current offerings. they've given hardware grants, travel grants, and project grants.
+
+### GitHub Education
+- not a grant, but the GitHub Student Developer Pack gives you free access to tons of tools (domains, hosting credits, API credits, etc.). basically free infrastructure for your projects.
+
+### Google Summer of Code
+- **what:** stipend to work on an open source project over the summer. mentored by the project maintainers.
+- **eligibility:** 18+ and "new to open source." technically not for high schoolers, but worth knowing about for later.
+
+### various cloud credits
+- AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure all have startup credit programs. you can usually get $1k-$100k in cloud credits through various programs. AWS Activate, Google for Startups, Microsoft for Startups.
+
+## how to actually get funding as a minor
+
+here's what nobody tells you: being a minor makes the legal side of funding annoying.
+
+### the problems
+1. **you can't sign contracts.** most investment agreements require you to be 18. your parents may need to co-sign or be involved.
+2. **bank accounts.** you'll need a custodial account or a parent on the account to receive funds.
+3. **incorporating.** you can't be a sole director of a company in most states. you'll need a parent or adult co-founder on paper.
+4. **taxes.** grant income is taxable. fellowship income might be. get an accountant (seriously).
+
+### the workarounds
+- **parent as legal wrapper:** many teen founders have a parent as the technical officer/director of their LLC or C-corp while they run operations. this is standard and investors are used to it.
+- **fiscal sponsors:** for grants and donations, organizations like Hack Club Bank act as fiscal sponsors — they hold the money legally and disburse it to you.
+- **stripe atlas / clerky:** when you're ready to incorporate, these services make it cheap and straightforward. you'll still need a parent involved until you're 18.
+
+### the reality
+most of these programs are used to dealing with young founders and have processes for minors. don't let the legal stuff scare you — ask the program directly how they handle it. every Thiel Fellow under 18 has figured this out.
+
+## what to do before you need funding
+
+1. **build something first.** every funding application is 10x stronger if you have a working prototype with users.
+2. **document your work publicly.** blog posts, twitter threads, github repos, demo videos. funders want to see evidence of execution.
+3. **start small.** emergent ventures ($1k-$5k) → Z fellows ($10k) → 1517/thiel ($100k+). build a track record.
+4. **don't optimize for funding.** build the thing. if it's good, the funding will follow. the best funded young builders I know didn't start by looking for funding — they started by building something people wanted, and funders came to them.
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