Being a high school student, trying to figure out how to balance schoolwork, a social life and extracurricular activities, can be an extremely hard task in itself. Now imagine adding in helping found an app development company that is helping create three separate apps.

That’s exactly what New Trier seniors Galen Quinn and Mihir Kumar and junior Jacob Sussman went through when they started BitByBite Inc in December of 2016.

“BitByBite’s primary goal was and still is to be an alternative development company which offers mobile/web development services at a cheaper cost by accepting payment in cash and/or equity, whilst maintaining industry standards, and at the same time, providing unique development input since it is run by teenagers,” Quinn said.

In the summer of 2017, the group got its first big break when JBUM (Just Between U and Me), a company whose goal is to help bridge the gap between schools and the needs of their students.

While other companies were expected to charge over $130,000 for the development of the app, the three New Trier students did it for free because they thought that there should be an anonymous platform for students who need someone to talk to and need help.

“We wanted to do something more scalable and that we could make apps and websites for people,” Quinn said. “By chance we came across this project where [Jennifer Mandell and Phoebe Monnier Manalang] want to help teenagers in schools or students in organizations increase their capabilities to reach out to social workers because a lot of people have anxiety going to a social worker’s office and there’s still a stigma with mental health. 

“Some people might not want to go into an office and be known, so we wanted to create an anonymous platform for that.”

So the three friends, whose projects are self-funded, spent the entire summer creating a beta test of the app, which launched in early September. The beta tested others, many of whom included their friends, and allowed them to get feedback after a two-week training period. The group says another step in the future could be to create another beta to get more data because it’s hard to get, especially from high school students, because as minors, they need parental consent.

“If I never started any of this business stuff, I’m sure I would have dedicated all of my time to school and rowing and been a crazy good rower,” Quinn said. “I really think this is more valuable because I’m getting business experience and am developing skills that are going to be used as I get older.”

Working on this one app would normally take up a lot of time — Quinn says normally 2-4 hours a day but can be more during the summer or school breaks — but the three friends haven’t stopped there. They’re also working with a nonprofit called The Good Athlete Project and have created their own small venture called Park Dojo. 

The Good Athlete Project is a nonprofit whose goal is to spread awareness and understanding of the importance of athletics, and work with teams, coaches, and athletic departments to ensure they are done well. The project identifies site-specific needs of a team/partner organization, then develops a plan for support using one of those four methods: Workshops, Professional Development Sessions, Presentation, and Consultation.

Park Dojo is a convenient middleman, for students who drive to school, to find parking spots near New Trier. A student goes on the website and looks at all of the available driveways surrounding New Trier. He/She clicks on a spot that they find desirable and either bids or pays a fixed fee to Park Dojo. Then, Park Dojo tells the owner of the driveway that it has located a student who wants to pay to park in their space. The company takes a cut of the profit and the majority of the money goes straight from the student to the driveway owner. 

According to Quinn, it has been going really well and they’re looking to expand operations.

With two of the three founders of BitByBite moving on to college next year, and Quinn being a Division I athlete as a rower, what happens with the company is up in the air.

“I think that we have completed our part in JBUM. It’s an ongoing partnership but it’s there responsibility to do more of the marketing,” Quinn said. “I think, if more than anything, this is an experiment of our abilities as high schoolers and I’m not sure if we’ll continue this together in college but I know that individually we’ll work on stuff like this. The Good Athlete Project will continue into the summer and if we find any small client projects we’ll start doing that but I’m not sure what the future holds.”

– Published March 12, 2008

As of April 2020, it looks like only The Good Athlete Project is still in existence.