Shreyas Parab is the founder and CEO of Novel Tie, a tie company creating witty and silly ties. His ties not only help uniform-bound students, as well as the young-at-heart add flare and individuality to restrictive dress codes, but Shreyas founded Novel Tie on the notion that a funny tie could start conversations for you. Talk about a great icebreaker.
Novel Tie is projected to rake in $50,000 next year, which would double the revenue in only its second full year of business. Making money was never the goal, as seldom is for kid entrepreneurs, but Shreyas uses his profitable business as a philanthropic platform and gives back to the community that “took a chance on him.”
The success of his first company also lead Shreyas to partner with his best friend and 2014 Scripps National Spelling Bee co-champion, Sriram Hathwar, to found Spell for Success, a company that helps students win the spelling bee contest. Shreyas has also given five Tedx talks and is himself a two-time Scripps National Speller. He’s sat down with Walmart’s CEO, as well as his state senator, Bob Casey, to discuss the expansion of youth entrepreneurship in Philadelphia. Shreyas is 16 years old.
Despite what you may think he thinks of himself, Shreyas is a self-described, socially awkward kid who does not enjoy public speaking. His stomach knots on the podium like the rest of America. He gets nervous, questions himself at times and has failed. I doubt he thinks of himself as the face of confidence.
During our 60-minute interview, however, Shreyas helped me deconstruct what confidence is. We all know it takes a confident person to takes risks and be vulnerable. However, Shreyas doesn’t take ambitious chances because he feels indestructible or when he feels great about himself. Some may, and they often reek of arrogance. For Shreyas, though, the benefits of putting himself out there simply outweigh the sting of failure. Shreyas’ confidence is built on experience, and trial and error, not ego.
Shreyas didn’t always have this view on failure. His foray into the business of risk likely started on the baseball field (maybe sooner, but certainly not later). He was terrible at baseball. His coach told him he should stick to the outfield. But it was on the baseball field, where Shreyas came head to head with a roadblock and made the choice to look elsewhere, which is often where confidence begins: with a single decision to keep going, even if it’s in another direction.
“I used to see all those [spelling bee] kids on ESPN. The same time of the year, the little league baseball championship was going on and I thought how cool would it be to be on ESPN,” admits Shreyas.
Shreyas knew he would never end up on ESPN playing baseball. But he thought he might have a shot at winning the national spelling bee contest. He always loved to read. Shreyas’ parents were nervous about him pursuing such an ambitious venture. No parent wants to see their child disappointed or hurt. But they fully supported him.
Out of the thirty organizers he contacted, only one responded. But one was all he needed. Shreyas was the only kid to give a talk that evening, but his became one of the most watched of the bunch. Shreyas is now five Tedx talks in.
Shreyas knew he would never end up on ESPN playing baseball. But he thought he might have a shot at winning the national spelling bee contest. He always loved to read. Shreyas’ parents were nervous about him pursuing such an ambitious venture. No parent wants to see their child disappointed or hurt. But they fully supported him.
“[My mom] says her biggest fear is of me getting hurt, of me failing and feeling horrible,” says Shreyas. “But I thank my parents everyday for it. They're letting me go out there and make those mistakes and learn from them. They're also giving me the resources and the support to go out there and succeed just as much.”
Shreyas didn’t win the national spelling bee contest. His best friend did.
“I was so disappointed,” Shreyas said. “And I thought man, I wanted to be number one and I wasn't.”
But there’s often success even in failure, especially when pursuing a passion. Shreyas may not have won first place at the national level, but he did win the class spelling bee and the school spelling bee contest. And by experiencing these wins and failures, he was able to lay the groundwork for building his confidence.
“I would've never made it to the national stage had I been too afraid to try because of failure,” shares Shreyas.
It was a pivotal lesson that carried Shreyas forward and enabled him to pursue his next unlikely venture: giving a Tedx talk at just 13 years of age. The amazing feat was not that Shreyas gave the talk, but that Shreyas gave the talk before he was a kid CEO or had anything accomplished to talk about. The locally organized platform of short, carefully prepared talks that foster learning and inspiration first caught Shreyas’ attention after his eighth grade teacher introduced Tedx talks to his class.
He decided one day he wanted to do a talk himself and share a message about every child’s innate incredibility.
Shreyas had no idea how do this at first. When he approached the same teacher for help, she told him to she couldn’t do the work for him and he would need to figure it out. In her, he may have had the best mentor, the kind who supports you without doing the work for you.
“Where I've learned the most is not from someone telling me, this is the answer,” says Shreyas. “It's from me figuring it out myself.”
Shreyas cold-emailed 30 different Tedx organizers, and emailed one particular organizer five different times. He presented his seeming weakness (a kid with no experience), as a strength (having a kid speaker amidst a sea of grownups would add variety). And followed up email after email with a coy, “Did you get my email by any chance?”
Out of the thirty organizers he contacted, only one responded. But one was all he needed. Shreyas was the only kid to give a talk that evening, but his became one of the most watched of the bunch. Shreyas is now five Tedx talks in.
By now, Shreyas had established a pattern: He didn’t wait to be qualified enough to pursue his ambitions. He just did, and figured it out from there. And just the way he liked the idea of giving a Tedx talk, though he had no real credentials to do so, he pursued the idea of entrepreneurship before he had an idea for a business or any experience to start one. Shreyas joined the Young Entrepreneurs Academy where he found mentors and resources, and eventually uncovered his business idea after his mom suggested he wear something interesting that would help him start a conversation as the new kid in his high school.
When I asked Shreyas what he wants to be when he grows up, he shrugged off the question and said he didn’t understand why grownups always seem to ask him this question.
“The question I'd like to answer is, ‘Who do I want to be when I grow up?’” says Shreyas. “I don't know what I'll be doing, but I know who I want to be. I know I want to be a person who is willing to go off the beaten path, who's willing to take a chance, who's willing to fail, and willing to learn from it.”