Crimson-Icehouse fellowship offers five students one-on-one mentoring with top NZ entrepreneurs
“We’re going to pay students to drop out of their high school,” Icehouse Ventures chief executive Robbie Paul says.
“That might sound crazy, but here’s what they get: a fully funded scholarship to go to one of the top high schools in the world: Crimson Global Academy.
“We will fund you to have a year-long, immersive, deep dive into pursuing your entrepreneurial ambitions.”
Paul says Icehouse is “still experimenting with a few ideas”, but it will certainly come with 1:1 mentorship and support from founders like Craig Piggott from Halter, Levi Fawcett from Partly, Crimson founder Jamie Beaton and Fangzhou Jiang and Brooke Roberts from Sharesies.
There will also be workshops and seminars at Icehouse.
Applications (here) close June 21.
Five students will be selected, with tuition starting in February 2026.
The idea is that you ditch your last year of traditional high school to attend the Crimson Global Academy for your final year.
That tuition would ordinarily cost $28,500.
‘Against the grain’
“In high school, I thought entrepreneurship meant ‘unemployment’,” Beaton says.
“I thought business was a ‘bum subject’ that you didn’t take if you were a serious academic student.”
The fellowship programme is taking the opposite approach.
“We’re looking for the next generation of founders.”
So, how do you make the cut?
“We’re looking for academic excellence, but also evidence of entrepreneurial activity,” Beaton says.
“It could be someone who’s been selling sneakers on Trade Me. It could be someone who’s built a business flipping trading cards online, or who has built a podcast and knows what it’s like to get something from zero to one.
“We want to see a desire to build and a willingness to go against the grain.”
Exhibit A is Icehouse partner Jack McQuire, who posted to LinkedIn, “The only detention I ever got in high school was for entrepreneurship.
“I started out buying sherbet straws from the corner dairy and on-selling them on the bus.
“Eventually, I found the commercial scale supplier and bought in bulk. I distributed them to students on each of the other bus routes. I peaked at making a few hundred dollars a day before the school caught on.”
“Entrepreneurship is not a rational economic decision, it’s this burning desire to run through any water. We’re looking for that crazy founder energy.”
Beaton adds: “It isn’t just fluffy inspiration. There will be heavy-duty mentorship on the structure and frameworks you need to bring your ideas to life; tangible business-building skillsets.”
He wants to replicate the experience he had as a young entrepreneur, when he could learn practical skills from the late billionaire Julian Robertson.
Themes will have some crossover to his Navigators programme for Auckland University’s Business School.
Logan’s run
“30 is almost old in Silicon Valley,” says Beaton.
“So we want to make sure young people can get on to their founder journey as soon as possible.
“You move through CGA [Crimson Global Academy] based on your ability, not your age.”
He gives the example of Tristan Pang, who graduated CGA at 13 before becoming one of Auckland University’s youngest graduates (he’s currently doing an oceanography PhD at Oxford.)
Straight to work?
Does he see the first five fellowship recipients going to varsity?
“Realistically, some will go directly to building their company. There will be some 18-year-olds who will finish this; they’ll have a good education.
“They might do some more online courses, but they’ll want to raise funding from Icehouse and Crimson Accelerate and get building.”
Crimson Accelerate is a seed-stage venture capital fund run by Crimson and reserved for alumni.
A kickstart is guaranteed. Icehouse will give every student who comes through the fellowship programme $10,000 toward launching their own business.
“But I would say probably three out of five will go on to schools like Stanford,” Beaton says.
Paul points out that while the fellowship is new, many students have spent a summer or a gap year as an intern at Icehouse.
A case in point is Yang Fan Yun, the Auckland-raised, 24-year-old founder of Composite, an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up based in Silicon Valley. He attended Maclean’s College in east Auckland before, via Crimson, pursuing grad and post-grad degrees in California.
“Jamie and Icehouse Ventures were heavy inspirations for my founding journey. I interned at Icehouse Ventures after my first year at Stanford, where I got to see awesome Kiwi companies like Halter and Partly up close,” Yang says.
“The next summer, I was interning at a quantitative hedge fund in Boston, but spent evenings on video calls with Jamie [Beaton], bouncing start-up ideas. Now, both Jamie and Icehouse Ventures are investors in Composite.”
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.