For many high school students, juggling schoolwork, extracurricular activities and social events is difficult enough by itself. Meanwhile in the adult world, professional entrepreneurs can dedicate all of their time to manage their budding businesses. For seniors Alec Schultz and Sawyer Timco, those worlds collide; producing videos and reaching out to large corporations is just a part of their daily routine.

In 2015, then rising sophomores Timco and Schultz discovered their mutual interest in iPhones and, posted their first video to Techie Grad, a YouTube channel and website dedicated to giving honest reviews of the latest tech by and for students. Over the past two years, the pair has grown their business, receiving new releases from brands like Samsung and handing out customized fidget spinners with the Techie Grad logo emblazoned on the center. The two friends started the business as a way to keep up with the ever growing and changing tech industry.

“We started Techie Grad because we’re both really interested in technology and wanted to see how it would develop over the next couple of years,” Schultz said. “We mainly post reviews on YouTube, and we do reviews of different phones and different technology.”

The partners found that they were able to utilize their previous knowledge and experiences with technology from their time working in the digital field. While most companies start with the intention of bringing in revenue, Techie Grad began for fun.

“We both really like phones and stuff and we always talk about it so we figured we might as well make a website and see where it goes,” Schultz said. “Also, we both have previously worked at a lot of websites before we started it and have done YouTube channels, so we thought we could try it ourselves. I think it really just started as a hobby.”

While they both contribute to the operation of the company, Timco films and appears in most of the videos produced and Schultz handles the outreach and script-writing. According to sophomore Patrick Connor, Techie Grad is known for their unique style of filming and editing high quality videos, both in commissioned reviews and original content.

“I think one of my favorite things about Techie Grad is that there’s definitely a high production value,” Connor said. “The videos seem really well done and there’s a clear amount of effort put into them, which I think is definitely worth it.”

In addition to tech reviews, the pair has also found success in producing more comical videos, such as their popular iPhone diss track with over 13,000 views. They aim to reach a unique audience and add a touch of humor to the online tech industry.

“There’s a lot of people who do technology reviews so we thought we would try to do something different than that,” Timco said. “We did a diss track which was pretty successful. It got us on the cover of the Statesman. That was fun. We weren’t really expecting it, we just thought it would be funny.”

Understanding that their main audience is teens and college-aged students, Techie Grad’s reviews are often on products that are either popular or affordable for this demographic. According to the partners, pricing is one of the main factor that plays into selecting products for their reviews.
“We look mainly at price and then for some phones we look at interesting features that students would really be able to take advantage of,” Schultz said.

One of the company’s biggest challenges is appearing serious and legitimate when interacting with large companies. According to Schultz, it took the team a while to reach the point where companies would take them seriously, especially as students.

“You have to be convincing,” Schultz said. “Calling a company like Samsung and asking them for thousands of dollars worth of tech stuff is weird to do because you have to be able to talk fast enough, and learning how to do that was difficult. I was actually surprised at how quickly we were able to get devices. I was worried that we were going to be having to buy our own devices and then returning them but we’re able to get the devices directly from the company pretty quickly.”

As the company became more experienced and established, outreach became less of an obstacle, especially as they began creating more content and reaching a larger audience. In addition to receiving devices, they have also begun to make some money from their videos and partnerships.

“We do get ad revenue, but that’s not very much,” Timco said. “If we do a sponsored review for someone that will get more money than ad revenue will, but that’s not really our goal to make money.”

Along with sponsored videos and ad revenue, Techie Grad has made money selling over 80 of their custom Techie Grad logo t-shirts and have released a line of phone cases in partnership with Case Studio.

“We had a really good response when we were selling shirts; we sold a lot more shirts than I would have ever thought we would,” Timco said. “We also gave away a bunch of Techie Grad fidget spinners.”

Overall, the response from fellow LASA students has been positive. Many look to Timco and Schultz for recommendations, and find their feat as entrepreneurs admirable.

“I think they’re definitely following in the footsteps [of successful channels], it’s very similar to MKBHD (YouTube personality) and other YouTube channels with high quality tech videos as opposed to quick coverage,” Connor said. “I definitely trust their opinions.”