By VICTORIA ALDRICH

Timmy Allahham, Jackson King, Jackson Ward and Cameron Chambers have a prototype, a logo and a vision for selling solar-powered battery chargers. All they need now is a cash infusion.

The first jolt came Tuesday, when their home business, Puter Juicer, received $750, the full amount they requested from a panel of Young Entrepreneurs Academy community investors.

Bragging rights were another perk the Boyle County High School freshmen earned as they advanced to YEA! national semi-finals. A graduation ceremony is 2 p.m. today at the school.

“It feels great to know that our business can now be funded and we can continue along with the American dream,” Allahham said.

“I’m just feeling amazed and ecstatic about it,” King said. “I can’t really describe how it feels to win that, it’s amazing,” Ward added.

Competition was stiff in the program’s third annual investor presentation as 10 teams vied for $8,000 in pooled funding from New York Life Insurance agent Paula Lanham, Fort Knox Federal Credit Union manager Gail Gottshall, Danville Rotary Club President Logan Germann, investor Kay Sheldon and Harrodsburg First Main Street Executive Director Julie Wagner.

Most walked away with $200, a reminder of how precious cash is in the business world.

For two years, the Danville-Boyle County Chamber of Commerce sponsored YEA! as an afterschool program using local business mentors, according to Executive Director Paula Fowler.

The program is part of a national program operated through the University of Rochester. This year it was tested as a curriculum class at Boyle County High School, a wise move, according to Fowler, since participation increased to 25 students.

“It’s a transition year because we’ve brought it from a 30-week, afterschool program to an 18-week credit-bearing class,” Fowler said. “They’ve really had a lot to learn in those weeks.”

Wagner had no idea what she would hear until she showed up, but she was pleased at the projects.

“It’s truly a blind process,” Wagner said. “I think it’s the best thing going on in Boyle County. Fostering entrepreneurship in our youth is so important. This is the third time that I’ve been on the panel, and the presentations were outstanding.”

Unlike previous years that were dominated by food-themed projects, Wagner and Boyle County Assistant Superintendent David Young were impressed that students shifted toward lucrative marketing and technology projects this year.

The partnership between the school and the local business community is another plus, according to Young, because it fosters independent thinking while allowing athletes and others involved in extracurricular activities to participate. The afterschool format prevented that, he explained.

“You want kids to have the tools to become an entrepreneur but you also want them to learn to think like an entrepreneur,” Young said. “They have the spirit, but to me, the biggest impact is how 25 students can see it. I can see the program growing to two classes to impact 50 kids.”

The shorter program also allowed instructor David Christopher to stress efficiency, Young added, while using former business mentors as specialists to streamline their time.

“He’s mindful of making every minute count,” Young said. “They could hone right in on it in an impactful way. I was really amazed by it.”

Styling and profiling in his pink shirt and bow tie, Jairo Corona and partner Kevin Valencia were excited as they explained how their mutual love of looking good will help Simple Apparel sell customized T-shirts, hoodies and other clothing to the youth market.

“I’m super stoked,” Corona said. As teens in the digital era, they also have a finger on the pulse of online shopping and social media. Their classmates are kicking in free publicity, Valencia explained, by posting photos of them wearing their clothes to their personal web pages.

Meeting deadlines and tweaking their detailed sales plans was hard but they are ready to move forward, they said.

“There have been a couple nights when we’ve had to stay up and make it better but it’s worth it,” Valencia said.

Co-owner Colton Grubbs faced an adult hurdle as he explained how he and partner Mark Sleight will manage text message security and malfunctions in their business, Promotion Byte.

Sleight was among five students sidelined that night by the flu, but he felt confident going in, he said.

By merging sports instruction with baseball glove repair, Ethan Downey said Trader Sports will allow them to offer more diverse services than just sports lessons.

Hannah Green, Ginny Bugg and Kamearah Miller melted their love of cooking into Seasonal Sweets, a mobile food and catering business selling smoothies, coffees and seasonal treats at sports events and other gatherings.

Meeting deadlines and working together was easy, they said, because they divided the tasks.

“It’s kind of hard to work under deadlines but it worked out in the end,” Bugg said. “We are all kind of perfectionists, so it worked out just so. It was a really good experience.”

Puter Juicer’s plans were hatched last year, according to Allahham and King, when their computers kept dying in Boyle County Middle School science teacher Mike Tetterick’s class.

“Most of the planning went in during the actual YEA! sessions,” King said. Unlike some teams, they will sell products from other distributors, allowing them to concentrate on the retail end. And that’s no small task, according to King.

“Just finding the perfect things that would work was the biggest challenge,” King said. “It took us weeks of research in class just to find what we needed.”

“Locating the competition and the product was definitely difficult,” Ward said. “A lot of them are third-party distributors. The quality of competitors also is a problem.”

Consumer demand for solar-powered devices is growing, but finding products that work is very difficult, according to Ward. They were disappointed when one purchase simply failed. Certain phones also require different voltages, Allahham said, limiting their ability to mass market products for iPhones, the nation’s top selling brand.

“The iPhone is very picky about voltages,” Allahham said. “We had to find ways to combat that problem. We looked at the part’s specs and compared prices later.”

Allahham was surprised at the gap between low production costs and high sale prices, but the lengths manufacturers use to eliminate lower priced competitors was another hurdle they were forced to examine.

“You take a third-party iPhone cable and it won’t work no matter what the correct voltages are,” Allahham said. “Apple wants you to use their products and nothing else unless they are Apple-certified.”

Their product needs some tweaking, Allahham explained, but he’s confident that having a physical product the panel could examine was the deciding factor.

“I think that is what put us over,” Allahham said. “

Simple Apparel, customized clothing, Jairo Corona and Kevin Valencia, $200.

One of a Kind Cases, personalized cellphone cases, Channing Whitehouse and McKenzie Langford, $200.

Promotion Byte, marketing, Colton Grubbs and Mark Sleight, $500.

Mooving T Shirts, logo products, Ashton Cox, James Warriner, and Emily Knetsche, $400.

String It Together Lanyards, customized lanyards, Sergio Mercado, and Kevin Hatfield, $200.

BreHan Events, events planning, Hannah Wilson, Breanne Everett, and Jayce Coffman, $200.

Custom Prints, Hunter Bradley, deferred due to illness.

Puter Juicer, external battery chargers, Timmy Allahham, Jackson King, Jackson Ware, and Cameron Chambers, $750.

Seaonsal Sweets, coffees, smoothies, and edibles, Hannah Green, Kamearah Miller, and Ginny Bugg, $400.

Trader Sports, sports instruction, Ryan McClelland, Ethan Downey, and Jase Sharp, $200.