Who are you and where are you now?

I’m taking a year of absence from the University of Michigan to participate in the TechStars Boston program (a program that helps develop technology start-ups) to build our company. What FetchNote does is provide a really easy way to keep track of work while on your feet and actually do things you intend to do. We provide a really easy way to get (a note) down, organize it, share it right as you write it down and actually get back to getting things done.

We have about about 30,000 users since we launched in April – we’re all from the University of Michigan.

How did the idea come about?

When I came up with the business idea, I was a sophomore at the University of Michigan. It was for a class … I went into that class wanting to take an idea to marketplace, and found out that there’s a lot of people who want to sell their ideas, but no one really wants to buy them. After realizing this frustration with traditional note taking and organizational programs, I found that no matter who I talked to, everyone just complained about whatever it was that they had used … No one had anything they really liked using.

So there’s a fully student team, we built (FetchNote) all while we were all taking classes. From April we had a ton of success with our launches; and we were blowing up, and we were getting all this interest and decided, "You know what, we’re going to take a run at this opportunity."

Why TechStars in Boston?

What I found out when filling out the applications was there are a ton of people that I had just met over the past several years that were TechStar alums and the more that I talked to them about the TechStars program, it just seems like a thing we needed to do to really help our company stand out in an unbelievable way.

We got the offer from Boston and we loved the people here, loved the program.

How did you come to the decision to take a year off?

It was something that we definitely were like, ‘Okay, this is not immediately or the of-course-this-is-the-answer type of choice.’ We struggled with it for a while because right around when we launched was when exams were. That was like ‘Oh, now we have to worry about exams.’ Other entrepreneurs were trying to tell me, ‘Dude, what are you doing, you have this opportunity. School will always be there.’ I put it off for a while but was like, ‘No we need to finish school. I’m not going to leave right now and go take this risks.'

After launch, FetchNote was doing well and more people were supporting taking time off. We were talking about raising money and realized that people did not want to invest in students that had their feet in two different places. That was the key decision as well, if we’re really going to take a stab at this opportunity and raise money to do we need to 100 percent focus on the business.

How’d those exams turn out?

I did not study for exams very much. Pretty much checked out at that point. Bombed the last one.

Is there a possibility of not returning to the University?

I’m taking a year off. I will finish school eventually. It’s personally important to me that I do so. But I’m going to let the business dictate that. Right now the business needs me to focus on it full time. When I come back is another topic. My goal is to build this into a great company and then finish my degree when it makes sense.

— Alex Schiff is a former Michigan Daily Editorial Page Editor