Jack Lyons ’22 talks building a business while managing career, college and life with Sam Hollander ’21 on the next Commute to Class podcast - Blackstone LaunchPad

The next episode in “The Commute to Class” podcast series features a conversation between LaunchPad Global Fellow, Jack Lyons ’22 (Martin J. Whitman School of Management and S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications), and Sam Hollander ’21 ((Martin J. Whitman School of Management and S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications), founder of FSCL and program manager at the Syracuse Blackstone LaunchPad.

Episodes drop Sunday of each week and the entire “Commute to Class” podcast series is available on https://anchor.fm/blackstone-launchpad, Apple, or wherever podcasts are distributed.

Lyons sat down with Hollander to chat about building a business while pursuing a double major in two demanding academic programs, and now continuing to work on his venture while holding down a full-time job and completing his degree. What does it take to balance all the demands of the entrepreneurial life and avoid burnout? Hollander has great insight and perspective on managing it all with grace, humor and discipline.

He brings a great perspective to the conversation ss the new program manager at the Syracuse LaunchPad, where he works on initiatives to serve the more than 5,000 students, faculty and staff and alumni who are members of the program.

Hollander came to the LaunchPad the first month of his freshman year and literally helped build the program as a student team member throughout his college career. He has served as a Blackstone Global Fellow, Rubin Family Innovation Mentor and LaunchPad Orange Ambassador. As a student, he mentored scores of other student startups and also won top business plan competitions s across campus.

He did all this while building his own company, FSCL, a simple, affordable and flexible solution to finance higher education. Jack Lyons worked with Hollander as head of business development as part of Hollander’s FSCL team.