“It’s all about aligning incentives.” — Building a startup at an Ivy.

Adam Kirsch is the kind of college student you should kiss up to before he becomes rich and powerful.

We met several years ago and oddly, shared a common background with pastry/entrepreneurship and a passion for marketing, startups and Kanye West. We’ve stayed in touch, sending each other articles about Kanye and occasionally meeting up when I’m in the Ithaca area.

A junior at Cornell University, COO of the startup Yorango, Director of Special Projects for Big Red Sports Network, Partner at Life Changing Labs, an Ithaca-based incubator, and Alumni Relations Chair for his fraternity, Adam operates in another dimension and without question ranks among the most ambitious people I’ve ever met. His combined ability to organize and execute is miles ahead of practically all students and professionals I meet.

I look forward to serving him sometime in the not-too-distant future:

RILEY MASUNAGA: Cornell is unique because you have tons of talented students but there aren’t necessarily as many opportunities to work as there are in major cities like Chicago.

Yorango is a true startup with a full team and clients, but no revenue. So what’s it like forming a startup with students when there isn’t money in it?

ADAM KIRSCH: “It’s all about aligning incentives.

In the absence of being in an urban area or another environment where there’s a lot of competition for talent, the important thing is figuring out what people’s incentives are and then figuring out how to align yours so that you can get on the right page with the best talent.

In the case of Yorango — we built something that directly addresses the needs of many students who rent off campus, as well as their landlords.

The product is something that aligns the incentives of wanting to be a developer and also wanting to do something relevant to the community. If [our team members] were working at more of a corporate startup, they wouldn’t necessarily get the same experience.

Yorango is something very Ithaca and Cornell based.

Right, at least for now.

Because we’re all students, we can understand student needs while building the product, as well as those of the people we’re regularly interacting with. And [for our team], we can step into each other’s shoes. It’s easier to understand each other than trying to see from the point of view of someone who’s maybe a mid-career professional entering a startup.

How do you decide if someone has talent and if they’ll fit with Yorango’s culture?

Basically we’re looking for A players, people who execute at a high level, and B players, talented people who maybe haven’t had that key internship experience or haven’t ever worked with a good team, but have potential and are willing to learn and work hard. They can become A players.

You need to balance those two things: the ability to be proactive and work hard, with knowledge, talent, skills and abilities. Talent is crucial — because if someone doesn’t have a basic level of talent they won’t ever be recruited, that’s true for every company in the world.

Also, I want a team of doers — people I’ve seen execute… even if they don’t appear to have the textbook experiences, the right major etc, if they’re a doer and putting themselves out there, we want to have on the team.

When it comes to culture, I think that a lot of it from my perspective has to be a willingness to understand what we’re doing. Real estate software is not sexy. There are other startups here doing much cooler things than building software for rentals. There has to to be a certain willingness to pursue that.

You’re a partner for Life Changing Labs, with Big Red Sports Network, Yorango COO, a leader at your fraternity and a full time student. How do you make it work?

So I’m in a unique academic position. Through a combo of AP credits, other college credits and working really hard before i got involved with all this stuff, I got ahead on my academic track. I’ve been able to scale back the amount of credits I’m taking so i have a lot of hours to balance my extracurricular.

I’m involved in a lot and yeah its stressful, but I burn the both candle at both ends and have really good teams around me who I can rely and trust to do high quality work.

You find ways to make it work.

So… How do you do it?

ADAM: I only spend 1.5 hours in classes on Monday and 1.5 hours on Wednesday, so I essentially get 2 extra work days. Add Friday, Saturday and Sunday — that’s almost a 5 day “work week” to get things done. Then I have the “weekends” where I have school instead… Except it’s in the middle of the week and split up.

That’s how I look at it — everyday is a work day. Some days yeah, you can’t go out and party with your friends because you have work. You can’t always study as much as you want. You have to make sacrifices in other areas. You can’t do this or that as much as you want because you have stuff to do.

Within a business there are always tasks that drain your energy and ones that give you energy. What are some of the tasks that energize or excite you?

I really love recruiting.

That’s strange.

I like pitching too. It’s a good way for me to re-enforce my focus.

When you’re recruiting or pitching you need to explain to someone who doesn’t know anything about your business not only what you’re doing, but why and how you’re doing it. Even though it may be as simple as repeating something, it forces you to say “this is” or “this isn’t”.

I also just like talking to people. I talk a lot. Annoy some people. I don’t care I do it anyway. so that’s what I like about pitching and recruiting.

I can see how a pitch solidifies exactly what your company is and what it’s about. It forces you to be objective about everything you’re doing… What’s the elevator pitch for Yorango?

To break it down super simple into a sentence — we simplify renting with an end to end software solution for landlord and tenants.

From the second you’re looking for a property as a prospective renter to the second you move out or sublet, we’re trying to digitize every aspect of the renting process as much as possible. Our listings focus on being secure and easy to use, and if something in your house breaks you can fill a digital maintenance ticket or you can setup recurring rent payments and never think about sending that check again.

We’re building prop management optimized for the small to mid-sized landlord while simultaneously developing a solution for tenants to simplify their lives.

Every entrepreneur has their company pitch down — What’s your pitch for yourself? What’s your killer element?

I execute at a high level consistently and just try to make great moves with great people.

Whether it’s in school, life or entrepreneurship, I always look to build teams and raise bars.

At the end of the day that’s what it takes to move forward.