Evan Wilson has been an entrepreneur his entire life.The University of Pennsylvania senior has vivid memories of helping his mom in her recycled handbag business when he was just eight years old. The handbags were sold at fairs, so Evan would tag along with his mom from fair to fair, watching her sell her goods; it wasn’t long before Evan started making his own sales pitch on these trips, assisting his mom in making sales.
“I caught the sales bug,” said Evan, now 20.
Over the years, his interest in entrepreneurship and startups grew, but up until three years ago, he didn’t think technology or computer science was for him.
“There wasn’t much offered in high school and the one computer science course that I did take, didn’t seem relevant,” he said. “I [thought] that computer science was more for older white dudes or people my age who grew up with it. My parents aren’t into tech. I didn’t have a computer growing up, and because I never had an opportunity to learn, I figured it was too late.”
But then Evan attended a networking event in Philadelphia where he was introduced to Coded by Kids (CBK) Founder and CEO, Sylvester Mobley, who invited Evan to get involved with the organization his senior year of high school. That summer, Evan learned more about the startup technology space and coding — and gaining valuable project management skills that helped him later transition into leading Draft Studios, Coded by Kids’ student-run web development agency. And then, he landed an internship at one of the leading technology companies in the world.
Today, in addition to pursuing his bachelor’s degree from Wharton, Evan is the co-founder of a start-up, ScaffoldEd, a more flexible and user-focused way to manage school data. To date, ScaffoldEd has worked with over 50 educators at nearly 20 schools, has raised a pre-seed round of venture capital investment, and is getting ready to release the first version of the product.
After his time with CBK and Draft Studios, Evan reflected on some of the valuable lessons he learned from the experience:
“I talk to kids in college with me and none of them have the same kind of experience in project management,” said Evan. “Some of the skills I’ve learned [from Coded by Kids and Draft Studios] put me leaps and bounds ahead of what kids my age have learned.”
“Overall, I think there are probably 3 key things that I learned during my time with Coded by Kids. One major skill I developed was time management. As an entrepreneur, there is a never-ending list of things to do. But if you want to get out of survival mode, you have to protect your mental health and find balance. To make the most of my time and to continue learning (which is an important piece of entrepreneurial growth), I’ve found that listening to audio books helps me maximize my time and continue my learning. Understanding the power of delegation was the second key. Realizing that I didn’t have to know everything took a lot of pressure off and helped me make sure that my team was successful so that we could go further together.”
“Finally, I think my time at CBK gave me the confidence to be a decisive voice in conversations. There are lots of ideas, especially in product development. It’s important that I use my voice and leadership to set a direction for my team that they can act upon. I aim to make four good decisions a day — and to balance what I need to make decisions about and what I don’t.”
Next year, Evan will graduate from Penn and plans to work on his start-up full-time. There, he’ll be well prepared to implement lessons learned to run the day-to-day operations of his business. And he’s looking forward to the future of the city, particularly Coded by Kids’ latest initiative, 1Philadelphia.
“Students and young people will have the ability and confidence to thrive when it comes to technology and have the time and space to learn and be fully supported through the new tech environment that 1Philadelphia will create,” he said.
It’s exactly the supportive environment and introduction to tech that Evan — and many of his peers and today’s Philadelphia students — would have benefited from growing up, though nothing is slowing him down.
