Teen becomes CEO of Wichita startup company

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – Ayaan Parikh graduated high school in May and was hired as the CEO of Novus not long after.

“He thought, given my interest in health care, tech administration, and entrepreneurship, it was a good fit for me to start leading Novus,” Parikh said. “So he kind of gave me this opportunity. For the past couple of months, I’ve been working to expand it, grow it, scale it, and kind of push to market now.”

James Walker is Parikh’s mentor and serves on the board of his nonprofit. He says Parikh has ambitions, unlike anyone he’s ever seen.

“He’s been able to do things that very few would do at any level, much less as a high school student,” Walker said. “He stands out because there aren’t many people in this world that can do the stuff he can do.”

In high school, he accomplished many things, including starting his own nonprofit, Medic All.

“I worked with my nonprofit, and that was really important in developing the administration, entrepreneurship side of my brain,” Parikh said. “I think a lot of these individual experiences in high school, they’re now synthesizing, accumulating at this point where now I’m using them for Novus.”

He started at Novus as an intern during his sophomore year of high school and slowly gained responsibilities. In the fall, he starts college at Stanford and says he will use that to his benefit.

“In a place like Stanford, it’s the hub of technology, Silicon Valley, so I think it will be cool to kind of explore the scaling of an idea like Novus in Silicon Valley,” Parikh said. “I’ve obviously been learning from a lot of really cool mentors, being around a lot of like-minded people. I think it will really scale and grow Novus to a really cool place. Obviously, I want to continue doing this in Wichita, so I think although I will not be in Wichita, I think the impact of it will happen here. We have a lot of team members who are here and the large majority of growth will be in Wichita.”

Novus curates, tracks, and rewards people for doing things that help their recovery journey. For example, if they go to the gym, they get tokens, which they can use to buy things in their marketplace. At 18 years old, he’s using his age to his advantage.

“I think it’s really cool doing it at 18,” Parikh said. “Obviously, there’s not a lot of risk in my life. I don’t have a lot of responsibility. I think it’s really cool to try and build my impact in Wichita, around the state and nation while I’m 18, and kind of explore what it means to be an entrepreneur and lead project like Novus.”

Parikh likes being busy, and he has delegated the work of his nonprofit to others here in Wichita. He says his interests and experiences align with what Novus does.

“Kind of this scientific realm of health care as well as the health care, technology, the administrative side,” Parikh said. “I think all of that, it’s what I’m really passionate about. The things I explored the most in high school were within those realms. The person’s leading Novus has to have a great passion for these disciplines individually, but also how they intersect.
It made a good fit for me to lead Novus especially because of these interests, and the work I did with them previously.”

In his few months on the job, he has been learning about substance use disorder, meeting with experts in the field and reading about the field to better understand it.

“Being young, I have an unmatched dedication and persistence almost at a risky level because I don’t have much to lose,” Parikh said. “All I want to do is scale this idea, learn, grow, and experience more things. So I think being young, some may see it as disadvantageous, but honestly, because I’m able to risk so much, I can risk so much time and put so much effort into this idea and grow it, it puts me in a place where I can make my life this idea and grow from there, so I think that persistence and dedication is unique to being young.”

In the future, he wants to continue to grow other ideas, invest in other companies and mentor people.

“I definitely want to reap a lot from the people who know more, then pass that down to people who are now in the space I am,” Parikh said.

He says the biggest hurdle he faced when he started his nonprofit was taking the first step. He encourages people to take that leap of faith and get started.

“I would read a lot of books, a lot of things, but I never made that first step,” Parikh said. “I never sent that first email, set up that first meeting because I was too scared. ‘What will they think? What if it’s a bad meeting?’ Taking that first step is really important, even if it’s not the best first step. Even if you haven’t thought it through fully, I think it’s important just making that first step. As you continue growing and experiencing the field, it becomes a lot easier to gain the perspective of this was a good idea, this was bad, and learning is really critical when you’re young like me. So taking that first step is important, and not overthinking it too much.”

Growing up, he says his environment helped shape him.

“Growing up, I was fortunate to be amongst a lot of friends, older friends who had the same vision of creation of innovation, of value development, these kind of realms of things,” Parikh said. “I think seeing them and what they were doing helped shape my vision of like, ‘OK, I really like entrepreneurship, but even when I’m 13 or 14, I can develop ideas.’ And being in that environment was important for me and gave me the confidence to take that first step.”

Walker says Parikh’s potential is endless.

“He’s going to do something that might have an international impact, whether that be in medicine or business or a combination of both,” Walker said. “He has the potential to change the world.”

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