The Startup Junkies Podcast

Every business worth building starts with a problem you've felt yourself. This high school senior turned his into an app.


In this entrepreneur interview, Kanishk Sasikumar, a Bentonville High School senior and co-founder of Investo, shares how a DECA competition project became a gamified financial literacy app now live on the App Store and Google Play. Whether you're a teen with a business idea or a parent wondering how kids learn about money, this founder story shows what it takes to go from a notebook idea to a launched product before graduation.


In This Episode:
  • Turning a DECA project into a real startup
  • Pivoting from an art tutor marketplace
  • Gamifying financial literacy for teens
  • Freemium pricing and pilot testing
  • Why marketing is harder than building
  • Why ideas rarely get stolen
  • Choosing a co-founder with complementary skills
  • School bundles and bank partnerships

⏱️ Chapters: 
0:41 Meet Kanishk Sasikumar 
1:18 From DECA to a first startup 
2:04 Pivoting to teen financial literacy 
4:05 Inside the app 
6:26 Marketing through word of mouth 
7:33 Freemium model and Startup Crawl 
9:20 Biggest lessons: business model and marketing 
10:21 Balancing high school and a startup 
11:44 How teens can start a business 
14:10 Why your idea won't get stolen 
15:05 The money lessons schools don't teach 
16:40 Selling to parents and schools 
17:58 Building with a co-founder 
20:22 Five-year vision and bank partnerships

About Kanishk Sasikumar: 

Kanishk is a senior at Bentonville High School and co-founder of Investo, a financial literacy app he built with co-founder Arjun. The app placed sixth at DECA's international competition and launched in April. 
🔗 Kanishk on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanishk-sasikumar/
🔗 Investo website: https://investo-finance.xyz/

What is The Startup Junkies Podcast?

Candid conversations with the founders, operators, and investors building companies in Northwest Arkansas and beyond.

The Startup Junkies Podcast is hosted by Jeff Amerine, founder of Startup Junkie, a Northwest Arkansas organization that has provided no-cost consulting, programs, and events to entrepreneurs for more than 15 years. Each week Jeff and the Startup Junkie team sit down with people who have actually done it: first-time and serial founders, small business owners, investors, accelerator alumni, and the ecosystem builders working alongside them.

Expect real stories, not lectures. How they got started, how they found their first customers, how they raised money or chose not to, what nearly broke them, and what they would do differently. Topics range from validating an idea and finding capital to hiring, marketing, leadership, scaling, and selling the business.

With more than 450 episodes since 2015, the back catalog covers nearly every stage of building a company in Arkansas and the Mid-South. If you are starting something, growing something, or helping founders do either, this show is for you.

This feed also carries Querido Emprendedor, our Spanish-language founder series, and the Fuel Podcast, featuring companies from Startup Junkie's Fuel Accelerator.

New episodes weekly. Show notes, transcripts, and the full archive at startupjunkie.org/podcast.

Startup Junkie's mission: improving lives through innovation and entrepreneurship, from Northwest Arkansas around the globe.