You’ve heard it before. The classic story of a successful entrepreneur who started out in a different industry. Trevor Larson, CEO of Nectar (previously PerkNow), is no exception. Unique to Trevor’s story however is that he founded PerkNow while pursuing his undergraduate degree here at UVU. Even more impressive— his company has hit revenue in the six-figure range, all before he graduates this semester!

Trevor started his educational career wanting to become a dentist. “I got to work in a dentist’s office for a little and I realized it just wasn’t for me,” Trevor said. He had already started PerkNow when he made the switch to the business school. The idea for PerkNow developed while Trevor was getting a bite to eat at a food truck parked outside Vivint. There was a business card for a chiropractor on the counter of the food truck. “I grabbed the card and it said, ‘Ten dollar adjustments for Vivint employees.’ The wheels started turning in my head, and the next day I went to this chiropractor to get my back adjusted— even though I didn’t really need an adjustment. I asked him how he got connected with Vivint, what the partnership looked like, and who the best person to contact would be,” Trevor explained. This line of questioning connected Trevor with the right person at Vivint, and he began offering an onsite car-detailing service. Qualtrics later reached out to Trevor desiring to offer their employees the same service. As his business expanded, he recognized a problem companies have when offering perks to their employees. “We realized that companies want to offer a lot of perks, but there wasn’t a centralized hub to help employees know what’s available to them. A lot of companies keep the perks in a Google Doc that isn’t well marketed,” Trevor said.

“We finally decided it was time to solve this problem,” Trevor continued. “We hired a developer out of DevMountain to build a prototype for us to show at a student startup competition. We won a couple-thousand dollars from UVU to build our product.” Later, Trevor and his team got to pitch their idea before Mark Newman, founder of HireVue. “Mark Seastrand— I call him mustache Mark— had us practice-pitch our company before Mark Newman gave his guest lecture. Mark Newman came up to us at the end of our pitch and told us he wanted to meet with us for lunch. He helped us raise capital and get our company started.”

“PerkNow is an all-in-one employee experience platform. It allows companies to keep their perks, rewards, swag, and anything else they offer in one convenient place for their employees,” says Trevor. “Employees love being recognized, and it saves the company tons of time. We’ve set up the platform so that it can host any onsite services the company already provides. PerkNow also has a feature that automates a company’s gift card reward program.”

“Our very first client was in Arizona, but that’s our only client outside of Utah. Utah is a test bed and a really good market. It’s a smaller market, but it’s really good for what we’re doing. We do all of our demos in person. We’re really excited about the next year for PerkNow. In the next 12 months, we’ll start doing a bigger push nationwide.”

Trevor’s advice to students thinking about starting a business: “Starting a business while you’re a student is the best way to go. The resources that are available here at school are incredibly helpful. The moment you graduate, it’s gone. That’s why I’m a super senior.”

“You also have an easy foot in the door with companies. If you play the student card, you’re able to get in front of so many people and get some really cool feedback. Those connections are invaluable. I can’t tell you how many assignments I’ve been able to use PerkNow for throughout the Woodbury School. I used my company for internship credits. You’re going to have to do all these assignments anyway, so you might as well do it around something that you’re building and something that you’re excited about.”

“You don’t need to have a perfect product, just start selling it as is. It doesn’t have to look great, it doesn’t have to function great—it can be buggy. Just start selling it. Don’t give it away for free though. You want to know if people are willing to pay for it. Start at a small price point for your first few customers, and start rolling it out from there.”

“Be resilient,” Trevor urges. “If you’re signing up to blaze your own trail and build your own company, it gets wild. You have to be ready for that. When things don’t go your way, you have to keep pushing through.”

At the end of the day, Trevor believes the best way to learn it to start doing. “People ask me all the time ‘how did you start this company?’, or ‘you don’t know anything about tech, how do you build a tech product?’ My answer is ‘I don’t know, but I’m going to figure it out.’ I’m not going to let anything stop me from figuring it out. There’s so much ambiguity involved in starting your own thing and blazing your own trail, but you just have to be gritty and scrappy and make it happen. It’s been crazy how much I and my team have learned through this whole journey. We’ve just hit a big financial benchmark and we’re excited about the trajectory. We feel like we’re really creating something meaningful.”