JalenSuggsHawkenProjects2021

  I can truly say that my Senior Project has been and will end up being a successful experience for me. I say that because of the new things I learned, and the way I’ve expanded deeply on things I already knew a little bit about. Although I am majoring in Political Science in college, I’ve always had an interest in the business world. More specifically, I’ve been interested in strategy and many different ways of analysis (industry, customer, competitive, etc.) Through Mr. Ours’ guidance and me and Quinn’s hard work, I’ve not only gotten a much stronger understanding of these business concepts, but I’ve been able to apply my learning directly to something me and Quinn have worked hard on for months. I’m certain that is why I feel so appreciative of these last few weeks, and the time and work spent here feels rewarding. I’ve been working on something that I was interested in and could see the fruit of my labor, so I was motivated to work harder. My current experience ties directly to...

 At this point in my Senior Project, I feel me and Quinn are very close to reaching our current goal for Estim8. Over this past week, we’ve worked very hard to sharpen our business plan and all of its different aspects. Our business plan is a nine-page document that includes a business overview, the product overview, the app’s key features, our customer focus, the management team, success factors, financial highlights, Estim8’s history, our industry analysis, customer analysis, competitive analysis, our marketing plan, our operations plan, the milestones we want to reach, and much more. I’m going to explain more about the product overview and the app’s functions because that was the thing I spent the most time on throughout the week.  I’m sure I’ve said this in my blog already, but when me and Quinn decided to start Estim8, we derived the problem and solution from our own lives and the lives of people around us. Because we’ve both been at Hawken for a significant period of o...

 Right now, I believe we are in a very good place. Because we spent a little more than two weeks in the fall working on Estim8, Quinn and I thought we had a strong idea of what we had to do when we got to Paragon. However, that was not the case. I missed the first day of the project because I had to take an AP Spanish exam, so I had to ask Quinn about the vibe he got from Paragon and Mr. Ours. He told me he was excited to work with Paragon, but we had our work cut out for us. This message from Quinn helped me get into the right mindset and motivate myself to be ready for anything. The first day I came into Paragon, we got right to work. I learned about how to make a “use case”, where you take the perspective of your different potential users and what they would want their app to do. I spent about an hour or so simply writing different use cases for students, professors, and parents, and it helped me gain a stronger sense of what parents would want Estim8 to do.  After I made d...

 Throughout the early stages of my senior project, I’ve started to learn the importance of having a strong, dedicated partner or team around you when creating a business. Luckily for me, my partner, Quinn is a great person to work with on this project. Quinn and I have known each other for about 5 years, but we only started to become really close friends this year through our Entrepreneurial Studies class. In our Entre class, me and Quinn worked on two different projects together, including Estim8. There, I learned that Quinn is laid back and funny, but he is also driven and analytical. Personally, I see myself having a lot of similar qualities, so it makes a great working environment where me and Quinn can laugh and have fun while working hard to achieve our goals. During our Entre class, we knew we had a solid idea, but we couldn’t do everything we wanted to because of limited time and different requirements we had to meet that didn’t really align with what we wanted to do. Howev...

 Hi, my name is Jalen Suggs, and I'm going to be updating this blog to inform you all about my journey through my senior project. Throughout the next two weeks, my friend Quinn Petersen and me will be working with John Ours and Paragon, Inc. Paragon is a consulting firm that offers customer research, service design, content strategy, business systems, and many more services. While studying under Mr. Ours, Quinn and I will be learning the different methods and strategies that go into successfully running a business. I realized that I wanted to participate in this project during my enrollment in an Entrepreneurial Studies class in the fall. In this class, I was briefly exposed to the interworking of being an entrepreneur and how to start a business. During our final project of the semester, I worked with Quinn on a start-up called Estim8. We hope Estim8 will be a scheduling service that takes information from students' homework assignments and plans their schedules to minimize pr...