Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Spring 2014 | Page 24

2. Put your trust in the Lord.

“I definitely want to try another venture,” says Steve Dziedzic ’06,
founder of Hoppit, a search engine known as the “Pandora for
restaurants.” Hoppit was acquired by the XO Group, Inc. (formerly The
Knot), where Steve now works as a product executive.
A communication major who started out with a pre-med focus,
Steve caught the bug for building start-ups even though his first
experience was a bit of a roller coaster. Looking back, however, he feels
each step of the way was “divinely orchestrated by the Lord.”
A few years after Wheaton, Steve went to work for a Fortune 500
company where, as part of their corporate strategy division, he helped
create an incubator that launched eight start-ups, giving him plenty of
exposure to the process.
At 26, he had the idea for Hoppit and collaborated with five Wheaton
students and alumni, Jonathan Coleman ’06, Trevor Kaihoi ’07, Tanner
Gesek ’13, Jeremy Browning ’13, and Hanna Cho ’13.
He says, “Wheaton is a place that fosters innovation.”
After launching a prototype in July 2011, Steve and his team realized
they needed more funding, so Steve flew to San Francisco to try to sell
the idea to investors. After about 50 unsuccessful pitches, he got on his
return flight, completely dejected, and proceeded to sell the idea to an
investor who happened to be seated next to him on the plane. With
funding in place, he launched the new product in April 2012. By the
time the mobile app reached 100,000 users, they had a multi-million
dollar acquisition offer.
Steve now works in New York, and with plans to marry, won’t take
on another start-up for a while.
“It’s difficult to start a marriage and a company at the same time,” he says.
He takes no credit for this first success, as he firmly believes

good gifts—including ideas—come from the Lord.

3. Sometimes it pays to embrace the unexpected.

Peter Sidebotham ’07, co-founder of Studio IDM and Software IDM,
met his business partner during freshman orientation at Wheaton.
“He was on campus to post a part-time job opening,” says Peter, who
took the part-time job and inadvertently landed a career.
Initially interested in pursuing aerospace engineering, Peter changed
his major to computer science and began taking full advantage of
the generous office hours offered by professors Dr. John Hayward,
Dr. Cary Gray, and Dr. Thomas VanDrunen.
“A lot of computer science majors get their start in middle school, so
I had a lot و