ADHD Spawns Killer College Company

by Douglas CretsJune 4, 2010

So, watch this, and you tell me what kind of entrepreneurs we are dealing with here.

I wanted to figure out a little bit about Notehall and how they got started, so I set up an interview with Notehall founder Sean Conway and asked him five blitzkrieg questions to get his sense of the edupreneur zeitgeist. That’s two German words in one sentence and a made up word. So, three German words. We are off to a great start.

Here’s what Sean said:

ed: What challenging aspect of the industry is Notehall currently trying to tackle? In other words, why was the company designed?

Notehall is attempting the level the playing field by providing archived and current study materials that were once only available to students, who were part of an exclusive social group like a fraternity or sorority. Notehall also provides a great opportunity for students who excel in a particular subject to earn supplemental income by providing their notes to their classmates. Notehall is also attempting to force professors to teach up-to-date and relevant material to their students and prevent the rehearsal of the same material semester after semester.

ed: What do you think education entrepreneurs need at this moment in the industry to be successful? Marketing? A good idea? A network?

Mentorship/Network. A good team with an average idea will eventually discover a successful business if the right hands are helping guide them and see opportunities. Overall, entrepreneurs need to find the ideas that provide value within education and be able to provide their product or service in a simplistic way.

ed: What is the biggest expense for your company right now outside of human capital? Do you see that changing? And what factors would change that?

Customer acquisition and experimenting with new ideas is currently our largest expense. However, we have seen this change as we develop more features/benefits that better educate our user base and create more organic growth. When pioneering a new market, you have to expect to make a large investment into the learning curve of all your users.

ed: If you could create an extension of your company and do something else in the education sector with it, what would it be and what consumer would you be looking to find?

If we were to create an extension then we would stay close to our core competency, keeping with the students helping students sector of education. This would include: live virtual tutoring, textbook exchange, peer essay review, and creating a service that would help universities better educate its students.

ed: Outside of delivering a needed business offering, what sparked the idea for Notehall?

The idea of Notehall was sparked because I was diagnosed with ADHD in college and always had a diffficult time keeping up with the teacher while copying down my notes. This turned into a huge struggle for me because I couldn’t enjoy the lecture and let the material soak in, my pen and hand were always in a race with the words that came out of the professors mouth.

I knew that other students in the class had the same problem while other students took copious notes just perfectly.

And there you have it. That’s Notehall. And if you want to know more about Notehall, you can check this out:

Wall St.
Journal Article on Notehall’s journey to a first round of funding

Business Weeks 2009 Top 25 Young Entrepreneurs Article mentioning Notehall

And this video:

Bookmark and Share
Tags: , , , ,