Lake Forest High School is ahead of the curve in many arenas, one of them being the wide variety of classes students are able to take. Business Incubator is a popular class that is relatively new to the high school’s curriculum. I got the chance to sit down with Christina Gregg, who is currently in Business Incubator, and ask her some questions about the class, her group’s product, and the professional aspects of the class.
So what inspired you to take Business Incubator?
“I have always been fairly interested in business, and my mom always pushed me to try the class. It has a great reputation and I think it is so cool that this class gives high schoolers the chance to start their own business.”
What is your product?
“My team and I are working on a product called College360. Our goal is to create either a website or app that first matches our customers to the best schools for them, based off of a survey they take, and then our customers can find out anything they could ever care to know about the school. We hope to have students currently enrolled at the colleges who can leave reviews about their school and can communicate directly with our customers.”
How long did it take for you to come up with your idea?
“We were put into our groups a few weeks into the class and we almost immediately had our idea. As high school students we are constantly thinking about out futures, and a huge part of that is what college we choose to attend, so we thought we would try to come up with something to help students with such an important decision!”
How long until it will be finalized?
“It’s really hard to predict. First things first we need to get funded, and pitch night is not until May, so until then we can’t really work on the final product and instead are working to develop the idea and see what appeals to our target customers. If we do get funded we hope to have a product by the beginning to middle of next school year.”
What’s the workload like?
“It’s a decent amount of work because every group is required to meet outside of school at least once a week, and these meetings can be up to several hours long depending on what we’re working on. Every student needs to do interviews as well, which can be strenuous, but they’re incredibly helpful.”
How big of a commitment is taking Business Incubator?
“It’s a pretty big commitment because you need to spend quite a bit of time outside of class in meetings and interviews, as well as preparing for presentations.”
Has taking Business Incubator influenced how you view the real world and working in a real business place?
“It made me so much more excited about business. When I started the class I really wasn’t sure if I even wanted to do business, but now, I’m pretty positive that this is what I want to do as a career. It also has showed me how much work goes into a business behind the scenes, and how hard it is to start a small business.”
Would you recommend taking Business Incubator to other kids in the high school? Why or why not?
“In my opinion, it depends completely on the students. It is an amazing class and you learn so much that you actually can apply to the future, but it’s not easy. You need to work very hard and you need to be willing to give things up sometimes to succeed. I think it’s a really great class if you are willing to put the effort in.”
Be sure to visit College360’s Facebook page to learn more about their product.
