Jonathan Allen ’19 is not only looking back at his year at Oglethorpe, but also at his first year as a CEO.

Before arriving on campus, Allen began a research platform, Gauge, which celebrated its anniversary of incorporation May 11. Allen left an internship at SalesLoft to fully pursue the venture, and throughout the academic year saw the app blossom, as well as hit the normal bumps and long nights startups face.

Allen documented year one of Gauge on his personal Medium, where he also shared some lessons learned.

Startup Reflection: A Year in the Books with Gauge and a Lesson from each Quarter.

Hi everyone. Well dang, it’s almost a little overwhelming to even think of how to begin typing this. I don’t blog a lot, but today is special, today is May 11th, 2017, which means exactly 1 year ago, I received a pretty little letter in the mail which marked the incorporation of this idea called ‘Gauge’.

At Oglethorpe, Allen is a Business Administration major and presented to the OU Board of Trustees in February as part of a student entrepreneur panel. Gauge lets companies test and obtain feedback on new concepts, go-to-market strategies and designs. Through partnerships with large research firms and the utilization of an entertaining and engaging mobile application for user testing, Gauge is able to quickly deliver research results for a fraction of the price and time of other traditional market research firms.