In a remarkable story of entrepreneurial spirit and determination, 18-year-old high school graduates Christopher Fitzgerald and Nicholas Van Landschoot have founded APIGen, an artificial intelligence startup that secured $500,000 in seed funding while still in their senior year. The young entrepreneurs met on their school debate team bonded over coding and set out to build a platform that automates API development using natural language instructions.
After developing an initial prototype and testing it within their community of programmers and AI enthusiasts in Boulder, Colorado, Fitzgerald and Van Landschoot embarked on an ambitious campaign to pitch investors. They crafted a compelling presentation of their vision and the market opportunity, leveraging their debate training to clearly lay out the case. One of the individuals they reached out to via LinkedIn was VC firm Varana Capital, whose partners were so impressed by the teens’ expertise and passion for the project that they scheduled a follow up demo meeting.
Fitzgerald and Van Landschoot demonstrated a prototype of their technology, proving they could deliver on their ambitious goals. Varana Capital proceeded to offer the high school founders a $500,000 seed round, comprised of $250,000 in funding and an additional $250,000 SAFE note. The investment recognizes both the massive potential of the API market that APIGen aims to disrupt as well as the strong expertise and work ethic demonstrated by Fitzgerald and Van Landschoot.
Now with their first round of capital secured, the ambitious young founders are spending their summer focused on building out APIGen’s minimum viable product ahead of its beta launch. Fitzgerald will study computer science at Penn State in the fall while also continuing to work on the startup, with Van Landschoot choosing to delay college to focus full time on APIGen. Their story serves as an inspiration for any ambitious young entrepreneur and shows what’s possible with passion, perseverance and an innovative vision. APIGen is still in the early stages, but Fitzgerald and Van Landschoot have proven they have both the acumen and drive to scale their automated API development platform.
