By Payton Major, Class of 2025
This article is a part of a series of student stories of growth curated for the 2025 One Event. If you enjoy this story, please donate and tell us which student’s story inspired you to give.
This fall, I had the opportunity to participate in an immersion called Hatch, where I learned the basic principles of entrepreneurship. Immersions at One Stone are two-three week long learning intensives where students get to engage deeply into an area of interest, curiosity, or relevance. In Hatch, one of the key takeaways I gained was how to lay out the foundation of a business using a Business Model Canvas. Using the Business Model Canvas as a tool helped me to understand and organize the critical aspects of starting a business. Through this process, I gained insights into two of the most important components of any business, the Value Proposition and the Customer Segments. Growing up, my parents always had their own thing going and that's helped curate a strong desire in me to start a successful business.
This entrepreneurship immersion helped turn that aspiration into something more tangible by giving me a structured approach to understanding how businesses internally operate. The Business Model Canvas was particularly valuable to me because it allowed me to break down a business idea into manageable pieces, helping me to identify what problem my business would solve, who my customers are, and how to deliver value to them. About halfway through I realized I wanted to serve the offroad community in a meaningful way. Drawing from my passion of off-roading I began designing to connect with each other through several key features. These features would include buying and selling cars and parts, organizing group rides and events, creating forums for discussions, and offering detailed maps and trail information. Having this experience helped uncover my interest in app building itself.
This project not only gave me real app building experience, but helped me visualize a potential future in app creation. This hands-on experience not only gave me a deeper understanding of entrepreneurship, but also helped me uncover a new interest in technology and app development. Moving forward, I am excited about the potential to continue refining my app concept and possibly turn it into a viable business. More importantly, this project has inspired me to explore the intersection of entrepreneurship through a technology point of view, which could open up many future opportunities for myself. It made me realize how impactful technology can be in solving real-world problems, and how entrepreneurship can be a tool for making those solutions a reality. Whether I continue to build a business around this off-road app or pivot to another app idea, I’m excited to be on this journey of discovery and growth. The skills and insights I’ve gained from the Hatch immersion are just the beginning of my learning, and I’m eager to see where this path can take me.
