The fascinating aspect of Jeremy Olson isn’t what he’s doing at Tapity but how he got there as it tells us the direction he’s headed to.
Tapity can be described as an Apple Design Award-winning company which Jeremy co-founded along with his brother and father in 2009 during his senior year at UNC Charlotte. Charlotte. Together they’ve developed one of the most well-known apps that are available on the App Store.
How He got This Way?
Jeremy is Self-taught, a self-starter who is the product of a positive and stimulating environment. At the same time, he homeschooled with his six siblings and brothers until college and had a large focused group available for his endless supply of ideas. The parents constantly pushed out new ideas for online learning tools that inspire, quiz, and evaluate. His father, who was a real estate developer, was the one who taught him the importance of a positive “user experience.”
At the age of 8, Jeremy was absorbed with sketching and painting. He also kept his allowance to buy brushes and easels. To earn a living, the young entrepreneur started his first venture with a lemonade stand and acknowledged the fact that his siblings were overpaid and overworked, yet they were a cute and efficient sales team.
At the age of nine, he was looking to start a company that was large. With the constant support of their parents of his, he tried various ideas: board games, restaurants as well as software. While none of them were realized, however, he was able to learn to program, opening an entirely new realm of exploration and discovery.
At the age of 12, he had his initial web-based design clients. For Jeremy, it wasn’t just about failing quickly but rather the pivot.
When Jeremy reached UNCC at the age of 18, he was ahead in his field of life. Along with having a few successful mistakes, He had also learned that passion doesn’t necessarily make gold. Without a market, revenue model, or an offer that was scalable, the idea, would be better left in the bathroom to let an opportunity for the winner.
Which was the next winner? For Jeremy, It was the frustration of receiving a D on his sophomore statistics test. He was pondering what he should do to improve his score from the loss; he came up with the idea of a program to help with the purpose. The grades could download each course’s syllabus, calculate the weight of each test and test and then calculate the score required for each in order to get the A. Adobe Photoshop’s mock-ups gave his classmates an idea of what this app could accomplish for them. Their reactions inspired him to make it commercially available.
After Grades 2 received the Apple Design Award in 2011, Jeremy quit his part-time job and joined Tapity alongside his dad Todd as his partner. He began looking for potential collaborators and came across Christian Billings, who became crucial in the development of the next home-run application. Christian turned out to be an easy learner, and the two developed an intimate relationship that grew into the company’s first full-time employee outside of the family. “The relationship has been wonderful, and we’ve had a lot of fun bouncing around ideas for design,” explained Jeremy on working closely with Christian. “He’s an amazing partner and also a great friend.” Similar to his childhood, Jeremy builds off the ideas, passion, and sometimes editing of other people to sharpen his ideas.
Where He’s Where He’s
Today Jeremy is making a plan for the next round of apps, focussing on his marketing and design skills and the outsourcing of development and development services to partner companies, the majority of whom are at risk of earning a portion of the gains. The consulting company pays the expenses and helps fund the long-term development of products.
Jeremy is well-placed to pursue what he is passionate about. However, that might have a different outcome than what the public is expecting. In the midst of his limited time, he’s contributing to Smashing Magazine, writing a book and blog, working on his final course at UNCC, and participating in conferences across the globe. He’s already married and is thinking about how he will raise his children; Jeremy is working to transmit his philosophy of learning, creating, and giving back. He also helps entrepreneurs for an estimated eight hours per week, which the man says he’s got to cut back on.
A new generation of people, products, and innovators – Jeremy Olson, on himself.