(light ambient music)

[Lucy] (upbeat music) 40 finalists,

20 winners, $100,000 to drop out

of school and pursue our dreams.

I'm Lucy, and this is Teen Technorati.

Today is our huge day, it's our lightning round.

I'm kind of planning on winging it a little bit,

but it has, the structure is ready

and I'm hoping that that goes well.

[Man] Are you guys ready for today?

It's been taking me so long

to just nail down my actual pitch.

It's gonna be completely different onstage,

'cause with all the lights shining on you.

Right now I am not nervous,

but I'll probably change my mind.

You obviously don't want to give up

all your technical information,

people just won't listen to that.

I have created an algorithm that I named DocBot,

where patients enter information such as symptoms

or demographics, these are simple yes or no questions

that mimic questions a doctor would ask his or her patient.

Oh my god, is this first word gonna come out

or am I gonna stand there and just be like,

and then just not know what to do?

We are gonna go through the entire show flow

so you guys get a sense of how everything is going to work.

The purpose behind the lightning round

is really the elevator speech, it's teaching them

to concisely talk about their project

within a two minute span.

Sounds like the mic works,

as I get closer, it gets louder.

They are entering into a world

that at times can be incredibly high-stress.

And seeing how they react to that stress and if they

can handle that stress is important for us to know.

(light ambient music)

All my fraternity brothers are really excited for me,

they all know what's going on this week

and they've been texting me nonstop saying,

how's it going, how'd the interview go,

when do you pitch, all that stuff.

This is what I've been saying to everyone

this entire weekend, Hive is a crowdsource supercomputer.

We take these big pieces of data and we outsource them

to millions of mobiles devices around the world,

making every single mobiles user an active

contributor to a forward-moving society.

My name is Alexander Koren and I'm

a co-creator and founder of Hive.

Right now I'm just working on a transpiler,

completely unrelated to my pitch.

It keeps my mind flowing.

We're waiting in line for this thing to open

which probably will take another five minutes.

[Woman] Opens in like three minutes.

We will pitch in what, half an hour?

Oh my god, sorry.

I am nervous, but I actually think competing

in pageants has prepared me impeccably for this.

I've been trying to figure out how nervous I should be.

If you're talking about a project you're doing for two years

you're not gonna get everything across in two minutes.

Obviously, nail the first sentence, nail the last sentence,

try to sound coherent in between.

I'm gonna kind of go up there onstage

and just try to make it up as I go.

Hopefully whatever I make up will end within two minutes.

I'm hovering between 1:57 and 2:05 consistently.

Blurt it all out at once.

[Woman] I wrote my lightning pitch last night.

Most of the finalists I talked to have no yet written it.

Transparency toolkit is open source software

that helps you analyze.

So expensive, the image became affected.

Usually this bathroom is used for a bathroom,

but today it's used for pitches.

Hi, I'm Lucy.

I have something kind of memorized

but I basically don't have a pitch.

We're heading out.

Right now I want to leave a legacy,

I want to get onstage and be remembered for being that kid,

the kid that made everyone say,

huh, that's amazing.

I am so afraid of getting onstage and running out of breath.

And it kind of becomes a cycle where because I'm nervous

about not being able to breathe,

I start breathing a little more shallow.

There was a moment where I actually got a bucket

'cause I was afraid someone was going to vomit.

If I can get onstage and get that first

word out excitedly, I know I'll be fine.

(audience applauds)

[Lucy] Don't miss the next episode, where we all

present our lightning pitches in the lightning round.

And be sure to subscribe to the Wire Channel

for the next Teen Technorati.

(dissonant music)

(light ambient music)