This Facet Hustle Highlight Q&A options Dylan Diamond, co-founder and CEO of Saturn. Diamond and his co-founder Max Baron launched Saturn, the calendar app “that helps the complexities of the highschool day — even essentially the most chaotic block schedules,” once they have been college students on the College of Pennsylvania in 2017.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Saturn. Dylan Diamond.
When did you begin engaged on the facet hustle that may grow to be Saturn, and what impressed it?
In 2015, I constructed an app for my college that ultimately turned the muse for Saturn. I used to be a junior at Staples Excessive College in Connecticut on the time, and everybody was obsessive about discovering out who was of their lessons initially of the yr. I initially constructed a schedule-sharing net app the place college students may add their lessons and discover out their classmates.
It went viral at Staples — to the tune of 80% of the 1,800 college students on the college utilizing the app day by day — and since everybody had added their lessons, I noticed it could be a fast enchancment to make it a full-fledged calendar app that supported our insanely sophisticated rotation schedule. I referred to as it iStaples, and it helped you handle your schedule and see what lessons your pals have been taking.
Three years after I constructed the primary one for my college, my co-founder and I launched related apps at a number of close by colleges and began engaged on Saturn.
When did you resolve to depart school to concentrate on Saturn full-time, and what motivated that call?
It was much less of an lively “determination” than you’d suppose. My co-founder, Max Baron, and I met in 2017 whereas we have been each sophomores at Penn. Max was additionally working full-time whereas being a full-time pupil, having constructed a consulting follow serving to corporations like Beats by Dre and T-Cellular develop their advertising and marketing methods to succeed in younger customers. By the point we met, he had been recruited by Havas, a world advertising and marketing company, to assist lead their efforts with this demographic.
On the similar time, iStaples continued to have very robust traction inside Staples Excessive College. Roughly 80% of the scholar physique was nonetheless utilizing the product day by day. We determined to discover if the idea may scale. Three weeks after assembly, we launched one other college utilizing a white-labeled app to see if we would have product-market match at different colleges. Half of this second college joined in three hours, and we thought of that robust validation. Issues shortly expanded to 17 colleges, every with its personal app, earlier than we determined to consolidate to a single app, primarily so we may ship options to customers extra shortly. We referred to as it Saturn, named after the Roman god of time.
Once we had 50 colleges, we met buyers in California for the primary time, and Normal Catalyst led our Seed spherical. Nearly instantly, we returned to Penn to pack up our condominium — we had moved in collectively by that point. There wasn’t a lot of a dialog. We each submitted to start out a depart of absence and have not been again since.
As a university pupil, you have been additionally a Tesla worker. How did that work out?
Throughout highschool, I developed an Apple Watch and iOS utility that successfully served as a distant management for the important thing features of a Tesla — referred to as Tesla Toolbox. It took off amongst Tesla house owners, and the corporate reached out to me. They wound up hiring me, first as an intern after which as a full-time software program engineer on the corporate’s Supercharger Analytics staff.
I used to be based mostly out of Philadelphia whereas finding out at Penn however visited my staff in San Francisco usually. I used to be in a really demanding dual-degree program at Penn and made sacrifices to proceed at Tesla, however I used to be studying extra there than I used to be within the classroom, so it felt like the precise trade-off.
What has Saturn’s fundraising journey seemed like?
In 2019, we raised a $9 million seed spherical from Normal Catalyst and Coatue in two phases. In 2021, we raised a $35 million Collection A from them and different buyers, together with Perception Companions, Bezos Expeditions, Marc Benioff, Dara Khosrowshahi, Impressed Capital, Sound Ventures, Dylan Discipline and others.
What have been a number of the greatest challenges you confronted whereas constructing Saturn, and the way did you navigate them?
Right now, we help greater than 19,000 colleges, however it began with an app I constructed for myself and my college that completely supported our calendar.
As we began launching extra colleges, we realized that having bespoke help for every college’s calendar would drive retention. It is extraordinarily troublesome to ship that have to customers when each college has a singular schedule, runs on rotations and adjustments consistently. This really led us to double down on this technique as a result of we knew if we may resolve it, we may protect our retention as we scaled the variety of colleges we supported.
While you be a part of the product right now, you arrive in an app with each nuance of your calendar. That is a magical expertise for customers and one of many ways in which we have managed to construct such a retentive expertise for this hard-to-reach demographic.
Capturing that knowledge at scale was difficult. Initially, we relied on our customers telling us we would have liked to replace the schedule. Right now, that knowledge is crowdsourced, which requires important density in every college. Reaching that sort of density required years of endurance, not simply with our staff but in addition with our buyers.
As you take into account Saturn’s future, what are you most enthusiastic about?
We have constructed a calendar expertise that we really feel assured can change day-to-day for prime schoolers. Not solely does it make it simpler for college students to attach with their friends, make plans with mates and discover occasions of their communities, however it additionally helps them handle hectic schedules and units them up for tutorial and extracurricular success.
We have already transitioned from a utility app to a full-fledged social product and satisfaction ourselves on being a social media app that saves time fairly than serves as a time sink like the opposite merchandise available on the market.
What do you take pleasure in most about engaged on Saturn?
Once I constructed the primary app, it was to resolve the issues that my mates and I confronted each day. This previous college yr, hundreds of thousands of scholars used Saturn at greater than 19,000 colleges. Seeing how we’ve iterated to realize that sort of resonance with college students throughout the nation is actually satisfying. This can be a product Gen Z clearly wants, and we’re extraordinarily keen about giving them time again of their day as a substitute of taking it from them with yet one more feed.
What’s your recommendation for others hoping to start out profitable facet hustles or full-time companies of their very own?
Construct merchandise that sort out your personal issues. Constructing merchandise for consumer tales you deeply perceive is far simpler. Self-empathizing is a lot simpler than empathizing with others. Even once we began hiring, we centered on hiring proficient younger school college students and up to date grads who we thought would deeply perceive the consumer base. Constructing for this demographic is already troublesome as they’ve so many nice merchandise, and their expectations are calibrated by the efficiency of the now-mature choices from Snap, TikTok, Instagram and others. We thought this proximity to the goal consumer would give us a major benefit.
This text is a part of our ongoing Younger Entrepreneur® collection highlighting the tales, challenges and triumphs of being a younger enterprise proprietor.
