QuinnPetersenHawkenProjects2022

Hey there! I have sat in on some more meetings at Paragon, but besides that it has been more of the same thing. Trying to start a business is grueling stuff. I love it though! Not everything has a right answer, so sometimes it is difficult to have to keep trying and trying to find one that is almost perfect. The two main things I have been doing are a financial model spreadsheet and a business plan. These are both necessary to starting ESTIM8 because we have to convince investors to... well, invest. Things are taking longer than I anticipated, so I doubt we will be 100% ready to go to investors by the end, but I think we will be really close. Sitting at a desk each day and working on this startup has been both really boring but somehow really exciting. This is our idea and it will only become real if we want it too. I will share some more details about our idea because I think the readers will find it pretty interesting. Our first hire will be a Chief Operating Officer. They will be...

Hey there! I have been pretty busy with trying to start a company. I don't know how to, so there has been a lot of trial and error. This means I have spent most of my days just working on something then shooting holes in it to pressure test it. I will share my work with you because it is pretty interesting. ESTIM8 is an application for college students that automatically generates their schedules based on accurate homework time estimations. Colleges/universities will implement our system in to their LMS, such as Canvas. When students submit their assignments, they will enter how long it took them to complete. When teachers post the assignment, they will enter how long they expect the assignment to take to complete. When students open ESTIM8 on their phones or computers, their assignments will be loaded into their schedule with their assigned estimated time blocks. Our magic scheduling automatically finds time for each assignment to be completed before its due date. All the stude...

 Hey!     The past few days have been challenging, but very promising. After getting comfortable in the office and with the project's goals, I was really able to start getting work done. I started off by trying to get my thoughts and ideas onto paper. This meant I wrote the first four pages of a business plan for ESTIM8. This included things like our history, how it works, what problem we are fixing, and other miscellaneous details about who/what we are. It was beneficial to get this on paper because it allowed me to narrow in some details and focus on the project.       Jalen and I decided that by the end of the project we want to get to a point where we could present our whole concept to an investor to get it all started. Before we get to that point, there are many things I realized we still have to figure out. Jalen and I split up the tasks into two parts. I will tackle the business side of things, such as how we will make money, figuring out if we ...

Hey!      The first few days of my senior project were really important. The first day, my partner, Jalen, had an AP exam, so I went alone. I didn't exactly know what to expect, so I was a little nervous as I walked into Paragon Consulting at the Landerbrook Corporate Center. I met with my mentor Mr. Ours for a few hours. We first talked about Paragon Consulting, as I wasn't too sure what it was at first. He explained to me that they are largely a website design company. They used to specialize in writing software programs for companies. They still do, but there largest focus is designing websites. Sometimes, they do both. They made the Bob Evans website and curbside delivery software program, for example. They are a software service business, which will be very beneficial for my project. My first, impression of Mr. Ours was that he is extremely driven and knowledgeable. Every question I have had, he can answer, which is great.  (picture of our gameplan board) (pictu...

 Hey there! My name is Quinn Petersen and I just finished my last semester at Hawken Upper School. Although I’m excited to finally be done with tests and DBQs, I’m not quite done learning yet. I am embarking on a project of my own choice. For the next three weeks, I will be diving into the business world. This is something that I’m really excited about. In the fall, I took the entrepreneurship course at Hawken. I learned a lot and I loved the idea of being an entrepreneur. So much in fact that I actually declared that as my major at Indiana University, where they rank 4th in the nation for it. The final project in the course was to create our own business pitch, and my group and I actually came up with a pretty good idea. ESTIM8 is a planner app for college students that automatically schedules homework time based on teacher/student-based estimations for each assignment. Our concept is innovative and pretty handy, but there is a lot left to develop before we have a clear path to ma...