Three seniors at Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts noticed something odd every time they walked into a downtown networking event: they were usually the only students in the room. So Aiden Azoy, Anthony Tan, and Mia Rubio built Prodigy Pro, a free AI-powered platform designed to help fellow students start their own entrepreneurial ventures, and the idea has already pulled in more than 15,000 student users across 20 countries.
The West Palm Beach trio's project, first detailed by WPBF, grew directly out of the city's transformation into a financial and technology hub. Azoy said he and Tan kept asking themselves why they were the only students attending local tech events, a gap that sat right in the shadow of what's known as Wall Street South, which holds networking events near the Dreyfoos campus. The initiative now encompasses more than 19,400 business and financial service companies employing nearly 119,000 workers and generating $43.8 billion in gross regional product, according to the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County.
From Watching the Boom to Building a Tool
Rather than wait to be invited into that world, the three founders built their own entry point. Prodigy Pro helps students organize ideas, document tasks and milestones, and validate business risks, according to WPBF's reporting. Rubio said the platform guides young users through their entrepreneurial journeys and makes each step easy and attainable, while Azoy framed the broader problem in blunt terms: talent is equally spread but opportunity is not, per the same report.
That mission has already found an international audience. Prodigy Pro's user base includes students in Sudan and Malaysia alongside thousands of others spread across 20 countries, the station's report notes. The founders also use Prodigy Pro themselves to help with their other ventures, a detail that underscores how closely the tool mirrors their own experience trying to break into entrepreneurship as teenagers.
A Cash Prize With National Roots
The free platform got a financial boost earlier in 2026 when Azoy, Tan, and Rubio won $7,500 in the nationwide Mott Million Dollar Challenge, money that has helped fund free access for the platform's users. The contest was created by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation for its 2026 centennial, drawing more than 5,300 K-12 applicants from all 50 states competing for a $1 million total prize purse.
The competition culminated in a live pitch event on June 15 and 16 in Flint, Michigan, where 60 student finalists presented business and social solutions in front of judges for portioned cash awards and $25,000 grand prizes, according to the Mott Foundation. The contest was co-administered by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, an international nonprofit founded in 1987 that has delivered business training and pitch competitions to more than 1 million young people.
A Selective Campus in a Changing Downtown
Getting into Dreyfoos in the first place is no small feat. Palm Beach County students must pass artistic auditions scored by three adjudicators in specialties such as digital media and communications before entering a magnet lottery, according to the school's own admissions materials. The academic payoff has been notable: Dreyfoos ranked No. 125 nationally out of nearly 18,000 evaluated public high schools in U.S. News & World Report's August 2026 rankings, putting it in the top 1% of public high schools nationwide, as reported by the Boca Raton Tribune.
That academic pedigree sits inside a downtown skyline that's changing fast. Enterprise AI company ServiceNow leased 200,000 square feet at 10 CityPlace in September 2025 to build a regional headquarters and AI Institute featuring a startup accelerator, a project expected to create more than 850 jobs. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz followed a year later, leasing space in CityPlace Tower for its $1.18 billion American Dynamism fund focused on defense and national security startups, Hoodline previously reported in its coverage of the firm's defense tech office.
Developer Related Ross, meanwhile, holds nearly 2 million square feet of downtown office space with another 3.5 million square feet in active development, a build-out tied to a county that has seen a 112% increase in millionaires over the past decade, now home to roughly 71,000 millionaires and 68 billionaires, per the Business Development Board. It's the kind of concentrated capital that makes a teenager's observation about an empty room full of adults feel less like a complaint and more like a market signal.
What Happens After Graduation
Azoy, Tan, and Rubio are set to graduate next May, and they've said Prodigy Pro will remain a free resource for students worldwide after they leave Dreyfoos. How exactly they plan to keep covering the server and AI API costs that come with running a platform serving 15,000 users across 20 countries once their Mott Challenge funding is spent down remains an open question, one that will likely depend on whether local tech accelerators or municipal initiatives in West Palm Beach step in with support.
