Founding a start-up is undeniably hard, but some Harvard students undertake this monumental task before even setting foot on campus—whether to boost their applications, pursue a passion, or make some money. So what happens to these projects once students arrive and get settled at Harvard?
Harvard students have reported that many start-ups fizzle out as students take on heavier college workloads, put distance between themselves and their work, and develop new interests. Regardless, students agree that founding start-ups before college provided them with important lessons and inspiration for future endeavors.
Most start-ups start with a problem. For Clara Rohatyn ’27 and her two peers with whom she founded Dear Me, it was noticing how friends discussed food and body image at her all-girls high school in New York City. They decided to take action by designing and implementing curricula about eating disorders in middle and high schools. Alternatively, Sage Shurman ’27 heard about her nanny’s struggles to navigate the healthcare system. Shurman responded by starting Covering with Care to help low-income California residents file for health insurance.
Despite the immense scale of these problems, Rohatyn and Shurman both felt they had the capacity and time to devote to addressing these issues while in high school. Daniel Villafuerte ’27—who founded and sold multiple start-ups before college, including a wearable UV-ray detection technology and a Puerto Rico tourism app—similarly noted how much easier it was to find time to pursue these ideas in high school than at college.
“A lot of people in high school can focus 100% on something else other than school and still do well in high school,” Villafuerte said. “But going to college, especially the most prestigious college in the U.S., Harvard, it’s hard to work on something on the side, and then to also be competitive in school.”
Ricky Rollo ’27 started a sneaker resale business called Boston.Sole by sleeping outside sneaker shops the night before a new drop. After the pandemic forced storefronts to close, companies pivoted to online drops, so Rollo began developing software to buy shoes as soon as they were released. Eventually, he accumulated enough capital to invest in shoes. Rollo pointed out, however, that this work took up a lot of time and mental capacity. It became near impossible to sustain when he started applying to colleges and eventually came to Harvard.
“After I got into college, I didn’t really have the drive to finish selling off my inventory, so it kind of just died down, and it turned into more of a [collection],” said Rollo. “More fun, less business.”
In addition to the time constraints Harvard students face, they must also contend with the distance separating them from the problems that once affected them so deeply. Rohatyn, for example, discussed the challenges of staying engaged with the mission of Dear Me while at Harvard.
“It’s hard to stay connected, because it is based on education for middle and high schoolers,” Rohatyn explained. She remembers that when she was in high school, and particularly after the pandemic, eating disorders and body image issues were a topic of conversation everywhere she went. Rohatyn said, “Every single day [I was] reminded about why I have to be doing this.” However, at Harvard, she feels somewhat removed from the issue that once came up so frequently.
During her first year at Harvard, Rohatyn retained her position as Co-Director of Dear Me, but as a sophomore, she decided to step down. Although her two co-founders remain co-directors, they are searching for the right people to pass the program on to.
Shurman, too, is struggling to ensure that the work of Covering with Care continues. She tried to hand off her nonprofit to younger students at her high school without success.
“I don’t think they were as personally invested in it, because they never really worked on it. I should have distributed the work better to get more buy-in. But what ended up happening was I just kind of did it all,” Shurman said. “I’m not exactly sure what’s happening to it, but I’m not running it anymore,” she added.
Rollo and Villafuerte were more comfortable letting go of the start-ups they founded before college. Rollo, along with the friends he worked with, gradually closed up his sneaker business to pursue other interests. Rollo now manages a small quant hedge fund called Exeter22, using sophisticated algorithms to buy and trade assets like stocks and commodities. “I graduated from the sneaker world into something a bit more professional,” he explained.
For Villafuerte, scaling up a single start-up into a large business was never the goal—coming up with new ideas and laying the foundations for them to become a reality was the most satisfying part.
“I was never totally married to any of my ideas at the time. I just knew that I could move on from this and go into the next big thing,” Villafuerte said. “You’re young and kind of immature at the time, so you’re not really looking to build something out and come up with this big company,” he added. “You just kind of want to get the profit, get the money, and get out of it.”
Irrespective of the fates of their endeavors, each Harvard student acknowledged the immense value of founding a start-up. “It empowers you,” said Shurman. “If you see a problem and you think that you have a solution to it, and it’s worked before, then you can expand. You can make it work again. And you can try to help more people in an efficient way.”
Rollo echoed Shurman’s sentiments. “Each [start-up] leads towards another, and the lessons you’ve learned from one will definitely carry on towards the other.” From his sneaker business, he learned the importance of developing interpersonal skills, working in a team, and, above all, taking risks; each of these lessons now inform his work in the investment space.
Villafuerte also shared his belief that working on start-ups enabled him to grow. “What I’ve learned the most is only pursue an idea if you’re certain that even if everything fails, you still learn from it…and become a better person for it,” he said.
The student-founders’ work was not just fulfilling for themselves. Each made an impact on the lives of others, whether through bringing joy through shoes, sharing fun tourist sites around Puerto Rico, or raising awareness about affordable health insurance or eating disorders. Rohatyn summarized the goal of pursuing these projects. “As long as one person appreciates it, it’s worth it.”
Gemma Maltby ’27 (gmaltby@college.harvard.edu) wishes she had a good idea for a start-up.