Four seniors at Lake Forest high school have taken their business incubator class to the next level.

SimplyNav, created by Tessa Poulton, Brennan Riley, Josh Dueringer, and Molly Kelly,  is an easy-to-use multi-use navigation app that provides students with step-by-step directions and resources to help them better navigate the high school.

They started creating this company in a business incubator class in the fall of their junior year. In May of last year concept was named the high schools annual pitch night champions this was a huge accomplishment for SimplyNav. 

They received $5,775 to help their business this year. They were then selected as one of the country’s top five Business Incubator groups to attend the 2022 Business Incubator National Pitch Competition July 13th in Chicago.  

“I didn’t think we would ever make it this far,” said Tessa Poulton. “Not even to pitch night at our school.” 

The concept sparked when all four of the creators participated in Link Crew last year, where groups of upperclassmen run the freshman orientation. They realized that most of the sophomores had not been in the school and wouldn’t know their way around coming off of Covid and being stuck online.

Through the incubator program, they got to network with professionals in the startup industry which gave them a lot of feedback on what the next step is for them to make the company successful.

 “One of the judges from the Pitch Competition told our team about a coding software that we could use to develop the app,” Poulton said. The judge giving them this advice led them to a pathway of future success.

The next step for SimplyNav is creating the app. They discovered LIDAR(Light Detection and Ranging) technology last year, which is a remote sensing technique that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges on earth. When they found this they hoped it would be very useful and something that would help the team while developing the navigation side of their app. 

While trying to develop their app, they were looking to work with BuildFire.

“But we felt like they weren’t able to create exactly what we had in mind,” said CEO Brennan Riley. “We moved on from them and began researching other platforms. That’s when we discovered Adalo.” 

Adalo gave them the option to create an app that fits their needs and exact vision they all have. 

In the time between the National Pitch night and the beginning of school year the team has almost successfully set up the app and is planning to launch it within the next month.

 “We are almost done with the development stage and are looking forward to our launch within the next month,” said Riley.