Meet Kailyn Brown, the third-grader who won $25,000 for inventing animal-shaped patches designed to make injections less stressful for children |
For children who are nervous about needles, a routine visit to the doctor can bring an uncomfortable wait before an injection. Kailyn Brown, a schoolgirl from Columbia, South Carolina, knows the feeling herself. Rather than simply putting up with it, she began thinking about something that might make the experience easier for other children. Her idea became Sticky Pals with Magic Medicine, a concept for skin patches shaped around friendly characters that could help numb the area before a shot. Brown, who was in the third grade when she developed the idea, went on to win $25,000 in the kindergarten-to-fourth-grade business category of the Mott Million Dollar Challenge.
How Kailyn Brown turned her fear of injections into Sticky Pals
Brown did not begin with a business plan or a complicated medical problem to solve. She started with something familiar from her own life: she disliked getting injections. The discomfort gave her a reason to think about what might help children facing the same experience, and she came up with Sticky Pals with Magic Medicine.The proposed product combines a numbing patch with a character designed to make the process less intimidating for young patients. In her interview with Mott, Brown described the idea as a formulated patch applied to the skin to numb the area where a person would receive a shot. Although children were the main audience, she also envisaged versions that could appeal to teenagers and adults.
How Sticky Pals patches aim to ease needle anxiety in children
The characters are central to Brown’s concept. She introduced two of her creations, Chelsea the Unicorn and Dino the Dino, in a demonstration of how the product might be used in a medical setting. The idea is to give children something familiar and approachable to focus on while a healthcare professional prepares the injection.In her demonstration, Brown explained that the patch would be placed over the area where the patient was due to receive a shot. The needle would then pass through an opening at the character’s mouth, making the animal figure part of the process rather than simply a decoration on the skin.
How Kailyn Brown prepared pitch for the $25,000 business competition
Brown had to record her pitch video several times before she was happy with it. In the first few attempts, she spoke too quickly, then slowed down too much in the next recordings. Getting the pace right took some practice, and she later said she had learned not to give up when something needed repeating.Her aunt helped put the pitch together, while her mother listened as she practised at home. Brown worked on it every Tuesday and Thursday, going through five or six pages of notes. She also got advice from Elizabeth at VentureLab before travelling to Flint, Michigan, to present Sticky Pals in person to the competition judges.
Kailyn Brown explains how a growth mindset helped shape her Sticky Pals invention
As part of the final pitch, contestants were asked to identify an entrepreneurial trait they had demonstrated during the process. Brown chose a growth mindset, connecting it to the way people approach problems and learn from them.She explained the idea through the image of a stone in someone’s path. A person could try to kick it away or remove it, she suggested, but another approach would be to learn how to climb over it. Her comparison reflected the way she had worked on Sticky Pals, refining the pitch and responding to feedback rather than treating the first attempt as the finished product.
Winning $25,000 opens the next chapter
Brown won the grand prize of $25,000 in the K–4 business category of the Mott Million Dollar Challenge. The award recognised her entry in a competition that gives young students an opportunity to present business ideas, explain the problems they aim to solve and develop their skills as entrepreneurs.
