Michael Jarrett wears a lot of hats at his job with Horizon Two Labs, a startup studio near Grandview.
And that suits the 23-year-old Ohio State University graduate just fine. Jarrett has been trying new challenges ever since high school, when he took advantage of the College Credit Plus dual enrollment program to attend Columbus State Community College during his senior year, earning free college credits.
But he didn’t stop at just completing college courses as a high schooler.
“While I was at Columbus State, I started trying to get more professional work experience, and so I started working at a staffing firm,” he said. “And then I was like, 'OK, I don't think I want to do this necessarily.'
“So I started going over to Rev1 and going over to their events. And it was like spring semester of senior high school, I started interviewing startups at Rev1. And that summer, I started an internship with a healthcare tech company that was building software for home-care agencies, and were doing a lot with ICD-10 billing and different healthcare billing codes. And I really got intertwined into health insurance and in particular home health aides, and I would go on visits with home health aides and everything like that.
“It was just a great experience. It was really small team. And it was a product that was pretty early. So that was my first kind of foray into working on products and doing product management,” he said.
Product management is one of the hats Jarrett wears at Horizon Two Labs, where he’s officially an analyst and by necessity a researcher, product designer and marketer.
“A lot of people on the team seem like they do everything,” he said.
Jarrett began working at Horizon Two Labs well before graduating from Ohio State in December, continuing a pattern of finding new opportunities to advance his career. At Ohio State, he volunteered with Students Consulting for Nonprofit Organizations, which does free consulting projects for nonprofits around the state. He also completed internships with the Columbus startup accelerator Lumos, Singularity University, a healthcare startup and American Electric Power.
“That was my intention going into college was, at least every summer, I wanted to be trying something different,” he said. “Whereas a lot of students will take the approach (that) most companies don't want to hire interns until the summer after their junior year or going into junior year, I was like, I don't want to wait. I just want to try a bunch of different stuff and, you know, make money at the same time.”
Jarrett also got involved with Contrary Capital, a venture capital fund that scouts college campuses for promising entrepreneurs and ideas.
“It was an awesome opportunity where I got to network with students from … all of the top colleges around the United States (who) were basically networking on campus and trying to find student-run startups that were getting borne out of the university so that the venture fund on the back end could be one of the first investors to offer a term sheet.
“That was a great experience,” he said. “I got to listen to a bunch of pitches and do a bunch of due diligence on companies that weren't from Ohio State.”
Asked for advice for students just heading into college, Jarrett encouraged getting involved.
“Figure out what kind of sector you like working in (and) start there, or where you think there's a lot of opportunity at that's not going away,” he said. “And then start just networking with a bunch of people in those organizations.
“I mean, even still today, since I'm pretty young in my career, I still reach out to product managers from other startups around the country that have raised Series A or Series B funding, just to learn more about the role and their experience and what kind of advice they have. And honestly, I tell students this all the time, but if you play the student card when reaching out to people like that, a lot of times people will respond.
“I don't do it anymore because I feel guilty about it but it worked pretty well.”
Jarrett also used his time at Ohio State to try out some new ventures, including a business tracking Airbnbs and, after working at the healthcare startup, a business selling breast pumps covered under Obamacare. Neither worked out long-term but he values the experiences, and thinks Columbus is ripe for such innovation.
“I don't have much experience comparing to a bunch of other tech scenes, but it seems like there's a ton of momentum,” he said. “And there's a lot of venture capital dollars flowing into the city, a lot of tech talent moving here. So I'm pretty excited about what's coming up. I think more students at Ohio State are probably going to look at Columbus as a good place to start a career in tech, as opposed to San Francisco or New York City or Chicago.
“I think that Columbus is probably a better place to start a career. At least that's why I'm still here.”
About this feature: Once a month, Columbus Inno will recognize some of the youngest, most innovative voices in our business community via an Inno Under 25 profile. Know someone we should include? Email Doug Buchanan at dbuchanan@bizjournals.com. And be sure to check out everything we have to offer on our just launched Columbus Inno page.
