KENNESAW, Ga. | May 1, 2024

It’s a rewarding challenge to be the CEO of a technology startup company while finishing up a Bachelor’s degree. That challenge has been on Paul Ngalle’s plate for over a year now. Paul and his team of fellow student developers have foregone sleep in the hopes of launching a company completely built by their own hands.

 Paul Ngalle, a KSU mechanical engineering student, says that his engineering skills help him tackle any problem that comes his way. It’s a mechanical engineer’s job to take a product from the idea stage to the marketplace, and that’s exactly what Paul did with TreeCabin, a textbook streaming platform designed to make textbooks more accessible and affordable for students. He realized that you can only go so far with the knowledge that you already know, so research has been a huge part in successfully building his company. He took time to study Netflix (his inspiration), the publishing industry, the e-textbook market, coding, and his desired audience. His engineering background aided him as he picked apart all of his research in order to determine what in particular would help him build the most user friendly e-textbook platform.

Research may seem boring and redundant, but without it, the TreeCabin team wouldn’t have been able to get a grasp on Java and CSS, which are needed to write every line of code necessary to develop a streaming textbook platform.

Students, while you’re still in school, the TreeCabin team would advise you to learn the importance of research. Work smarter, not harder. Most of the time, there’s something to be learned from other peoples’ successes and failures. Learn time management skills. The development team had to master their time if they were going to successfully learn business, sales, how to write functioning code and do well in school all at the same time. Additionally, take this time to learn how to work with a team of people. How can your teammates’ strengths be combined with your strengths in order to accomplish the task at hand?

Enjoy your time, and focus in on what you’re learning now. You never know which college lessons are going to help you in the “real world.”