Creation Story

Bringing this idea to life is a story of youthful interest and happenstance fortune.

Ideation

Lincoln first came up with the idea of starting his business in August, 2022. Lincoln shared his idea with us (his parents) and we took the opportunity to talk through basic principles of business, cost models, and roles within companies. As mom and dad, we though this was a great learning opportunity and left it at that.

Persistence

Weeks later, Lincoln was still asking us questions about starting his business. What should his company name be? Would dad be willing to be CEO (Lincoln wanted to have someone with more life experience to fill this role)? What services/products should we offer to start? There was much discussion and conversation about the cost model (subscription vs service based payments) and how to make Lincoln's company accessible to everyone who needed help, no matter their financial situation. It's unclear whether mom and dad learned more from Lincoln at this stage, or if Lincoln learned more from us - either way, we all grew, together.

Opportunity Strikes

As fortune would have it, dad (me!) started a new job with Shopify in September, 2022. As we talked Lincoln through my new role at Shopify, he was excited to learn that I would be joining a team focused on supporting entrepreneurs and making commerce better for everyone.

Part of my onboarding exercises at Shopify included building out a sample store (that's this store!). As I thought through what to include in my store, it struck me that this would be the something exciting for Lincoln to see. Viola - here we are! The start of STAR Help Services.