By Charlene Macaulay
This Hoppers Crossing Secondary College student has helped invent an automatic toilet seat that could end household wars over whether the seat should be left up or down.
Pam Wealprasert was part of a team of three to spruik the idea at the recent TiE young entrepreneurs competition, in which participants were asked to turn their good ideas into robust business plans.
The year 8 student said she came up with the idea for an automatic toilet seat when she went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and fell into the bowl after her brother had left the toilet seat up.
Pam’s team, which won the competition, will head to Silicon Valley in California next year to present their product in a global competition.
“When we won, I was so happy – I couldn’t stop smiling,” she said.
“It was really challenging. Since I’m only in year 8, I didn’t know a lot of the hard stuff, like [how to work out] the financials and paying taxes and stuff like that.
“I’m more on the creativity side, so I did all the logos, the business cards, the designing process, the prototype and building a toilet seat.”
The Hoppers Crossing resident said she was keen to be a dentist once she graduated from high school, but liked the idea of being the chief executive of a company after participating in the TiE competition.
