Dolphin Tank 2026

Sam goes back to his roots, where his podcast started. And interview this year's participants of Dolphin Tank, San Francisco Day School's Entrepreneurship Competition. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

This is every no bad news Hi, I'm your host Sam of the NBN No Bad News Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

This podcast consists of 100% no bad news. Right now I'm here with Miss Costello, Director of Innovation and Technology at San Francisco Day School. So Miss Costello, Dolphin Tank is definitely no bad news. Can you tell me a bit about it?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Absolutely, Sam. Dolphin Tank is our K through eight entrepreneurial event that all students get to participate in at San Francisco Day School. Students spend time thinking about the problems they want to solve, the people they want to solve them for, and what solutions they can come up with. And then they get to pitch to judges at Dolphin Tank Day.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Thanks, Miss Costello. I was a finalist last year and the whole experience was amazing. From developing an idea to pitching it to the judges to bringing the NBN No Bad News podcast to life. Let's hear from some of the other finalists from last year. So what was your idea last year and how has it evolved?

SPEAKER_05 1:24

So my idea last year was an app called Foodie, which was basically a meal planning and a like grocery list app. And I utilize like AI and things like object recognition so that you could take a picture of like your fridge and it'll tell you what you have in there, and then you can plan recipes based on that. And then I also had some like onboarding questions where it would talk about like dietary restrictions or like preferences so it could like create meals specifically for like for you.

SPEAKER_11 1:52

Our idea for Dolphin Tank was redesigning the Lost and Found cabinets to make organization like cleaner and to design an app to make return to clothes easier.

SPEAKER_06 2:06

Since we presented at Dolphin Tank, we've taken inventory of the lost and found to see what has been named and what has been lost and how many per week are lost, and we also met with our mentors to create a prototype for the app we're making to help out with the lost time.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Now let's go out in the field and check what this year's participants are excited about.

SPEAKER_07 2:32

I'm really excited about sharing my ideas and listening to other people's ideas and see how other people think.

SPEAKER_10 2:42

This is my first dolphin tank, so I'm excited to get out there and do this with my friends.

SPEAKER_04 2:48

I'm really excited to share my idea with a whole school. I'm excited to present and make my idea possible. I can tell you we're gonna build a lot of things in Dolphin Tank, so I'm really, really, really excited. I'm excited for Dolphin Tank because I've never done it before, but I'm really excited to try something new. I'm excited to have a new experience. Well I'm also excited to see everybody else's creations, but I'm not it's not about all winning, it's about just being fun, like having fun there. So I'm just excited to have fun. Even if I don't win, I'm not gonna have a fit about it in anything. We're excited to share our ideas with everybody and having it become a possibility. Sam, back to you.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Most of these interviews were taken before Dolphin Dank. So, in case you were wondering, here's the results. The winners were a project that recycled old school merchandise.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

Our idea is called SF Day Merch Resale Marketplace.

SPEAKER_12 3:53

We've noticed some opportunities to improve ourselves and our community, mainly involving three things.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

First of all, kids want cloth want school merch, and they grow out of clothes so fast, and it's really expensive to buy new clothes. Second, clothing production uses a lot of resources. And third, disposed clothing takes up too much space in our landfills.

SPEAKER_09 4:17

And the two runners up were Cardverse. What is Cardverse? Cardverse researches and sells Pokemon and sports training cards. Send us your five best cards. We will research and sell them for a fee.

SPEAKER_08 4:32

And Math Club. We noticed some kids can get bored and just want more math at school. Parents often have to drive their kids for an hour to some overpriced math program. Also, some older kids like us would love to help little kids. P.S.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

No driving needed. Well, that's the end of the episode, but before we end, I'd like to give a huge thank you to Mr. Wheatley and Miss Costello for helping me with all these interviews, and also everyone else who was interviewed during this podcast. Okay, now that really is the end of the episode. You don't have to have good news, but you can't have bad news.