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 had 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 aspect hustle that will turn out to be Saturn, and what impressed it?
In 2015, I constructed an app for my faculty that finally turned the inspiration for Saturn. I used to be a junior at Staples Excessive Faculty in Connecticut on the time, and everybody was obsessive about discovering out who was of their lessons initially of the 12 months. 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 faculty utilizing the app day by day — and since everybody had added their lessons, I noticed it will 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 had been taking.
Three years after I constructed the primary one for my faculty, my co-founder and I launched related apps at a number of close by faculties and began engaged on Saturn.
When did you determine to depart faculty to concentrate on Saturn full-time, and what motivated that call?
It was much less of an energetic “determination” than you’d assume. My co-founder, Max Baron, and I met in 2017 whereas we had been each sophomores at Penn. Max was additionally working full-time whereas being a full-time scholar, having constructed a consulting follow serving to corporations like Beats by Dre and T-Cell develop their advertising and marketing methods to achieve younger shoppers. By the point we met, he had been recruited by Havas, a worldwide 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 Faculty. Roughly 80% of the coed 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 faculty utilizing a white-labeled app to see if we might have product-market match at different faculties. Half of this second faculty joined in three hours, and we thought of that robust validation. Issues rapidly expanded to 17 faculties, every with its personal app, earlier than we determined to consolidate to a single app, primarily so we may ship options to customers extra rapidly. We referred to as it Saturn, named after the Roman god of time.
After we had 50 faculties, we met buyers in California for the primary time, and Common Catalyst led our Seed spherical. Virtually instantly, we returned to Penn to pack up our residence — 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 scholar, you had been additionally a Tesla worker. How did that work out?
Throughout highschool, I developed an Apple Watch and iOS software 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 homeowners, 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 group.
I used to be primarily based out of Philadelphia whereas finding out at Penn however visited my group in San Francisco often. 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 proper trade-off.
What has Saturn’s fundraising journey seemed like?
In 2019, we raised a $9 million seed spherical from Common Catalyst and Coatue in two phases. In 2021, we raised a $35 million Sequence A from them and different buyers, together with Perception Companions, Bezos Expeditions, Marc Benioff, Dara Khosrowshahi, Impressed Capital, Sound Ventures, Dylan Subject and others.
What had been a few of the greatest challenges you confronted whereas constructing Saturn, and the way did you navigate them?
At present, we assist greater than 19,000 faculties, however it began with an app I constructed for myself and my faculty that completely supported our calendar.
As we began launching extra faculties, we realized that having bespoke assist for every faculty’s calendar would drive retention. It is extraordinarily tough to ship that have to customers when each faculty has a singular schedule, runs on rotations and modifications continuously. This truly led us to double down on this technique as a result of we knew if we may remedy it, we may protect our retention as we scaled the variety of faculties we supported.
Whenever you be a part of the product at the moment, 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 wanted to replace the schedule. At present, that knowledge is crowdsourced, which requires vital density in every faculty. Reaching that type of density required years of endurance, not simply with our group but additionally with our buyers.
As you think about 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 pals and discover occasions of their communities, however it additionally helps them handle hectic schedules and units them up for educational 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 relatively than serves as a time sink like the opposite merchandise in the marketplace.
What do you take pleasure in most about engaged on Saturn?
After I constructed the primary app, it was to remedy the issues that my pals and I confronted daily. This previous faculty 12 months, hundreds of thousands of scholars used Saturn at greater than 19,000 faculties. Seeing how we’ve got iterated to attain that type of resonance with college students throughout the nation is actually satisfying. This can be a product Gen Z clearly wants, and we’re extraordinarily captivated with 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 aspect hustles or full-time companies of their very own?
Construct merchandise that sort out your individual issues. Constructing merchandise for person tales you deeply perceive is way simpler. Self-empathizing is a lot simpler than empathizing with others. Even after we began hiring, we targeted on hiring gifted younger faculty college students and up to date grads who we thought would deeply perceive the person base. Constructing for this demographic is already tough 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 person would give us a big benefit.
This text is a part of our ongoing Younger Entrepreneur® sequence highlighting the tales, challenges and triumphs of being a younger enterprise proprietor.
