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Tech: High School Student Launches Platform Centralizing Organizational Logistics
By Madison Geering, San Diego Business Journal

SAN DIEGO — One Francis Parker High School student Arden Pala’s to-do list: study for AP exams, finish his homework and run his newly founded software startup, Helptivo. The local junior has recently attracted entrepreneurial spark for years.

Before founding Helptivo — a platform that centralizes organizational logistics — Pala founded nonprofit Sports4Kids in 2022, which has raised over $350,000 to provide free sports clinics to low-income students.

His work was recognized when he was named Sports Illustrated Sports4Kid of the Year in 2024 for expanding access to sports for underserved youth.

While traveling with his family last summer, Pala said he had a lot of free time to reflect on recruitment.

“I was thinking about problems I had when starting Sports4Kids, and there is no platform that’s built specifically for student organizations and their problems of tight budgeting, getting leadership or anything,” he said. “So I was like, is there anything like this that maybe would exist starting Sports4Kids? And there’s not.”

Pala spent the summer leveraging his knowledge and AI technology to iterate a product that would streamline data and operations for clubs and organizations like his.

By fall of last year, the platform went through beta testing and, referencing official launch timing, began launching in December of 2025.

Today, Helptivo is used by over 100 college clubs, nonprofits and student organizations across the U.S., including San Diego State University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, San Diego, University of San Diego, California State University San Marcos, University of California, Berkeley and partners such as the Lucky Duck Foundation.

Empowering Organizational Impact

To finance the startup, Pala invested money he had won from local business competitions over the years combined with some personal savings.

Pala worked with digital solutions agency ENO Solutions to bolster Helptivo’s cybersecurity and used AI platform Lovable to help build the product.

For many organizations like Sports4Kids, Pala said, it’s hard to centralize data and resources. Spreadsheets, contact information, hours logs, sign-up sheets and more can get scattered across several platforms, creating inefficiencies and making it harder to manage members.

“I was using probably 40% of my time just working on spreadsheets and my schedule was chaos,” Pala said.

Sports4Kids tried out a few logistics platforms claiming to centralize operations, but Pala said that even then, they had to use up to six platforms to cover their needs.

Subscriptions also added up.

“Most nonprofits and youth organizations aren’t operating like a real enterprise,” Pala said. “They don’t need an enterprise level software. They just want something that is easy to use.”

Helptivo aims to provide an approachable database that holds all volunteer information, tracks attendance and hours, centralizes tasks, facilitates event sign-ups and more.

Since its launch, Helptivo has been offering a free plan and starting at $125 per month for organizations that want more advanced features.

While the free plan will have caps on things such as profiles and member pages, Pala said it is still designed to be a great product.

“I’m not going to make it so that the free plan is less advanced,” he said. “I’m not going to cut features. What I want is for the pro plan to make it more exciting for organizations that want to grow.”

Pala said that his main resource goal is to break even. His priority, he said, is helping organizations be more “impact driven” than ever before.

“We have more than 100 organizations using Helptivo,” Pala said. “I can see how many accounts, how many members profiles each one has, how active each one is, and I’m very confident at least 20% of them will convert into pro plans.”

Makings of a Teenage Entrepreneur

Pala has been interested in business leadership since his early education. He hopes to continue running Helptivo through his high school education and into college.

“I’m not stopping it for anything. I’m not doing it for college applications,” Pala said. “I love business. I’m excited by the idea of having my own software company.”

Pala’s parents, both entrepreneurs, have been a major source of support and motivation during his entrepreneurial journey.

“My parents are the biggest role models,” he said. “They came from Turkey with literally nothing. They both came from humble backgrounds, and they started their biotech company, and it sold like some of the first COVID-19 tests, and they were able to get acquired. That idea of creating something with useful impact, helping people use it and seeing it grow — that’s something I want to do.”

Stanford University is Pala’s dream school, he said, and a great place to find co-founder for future ventures. Right now, he is considering economics as a potential major.

If he could give advice to other young founders, Pala said, “You can just have an idea, and you can do whatever you want. Pala said. “Those tools are so powerful, and you definitely want to jump on them as soon as you can. There’s no risk in trying it out, and putting your dreams into reality.”