Entrepreneurial Education From Smith Helps Alumnus Follow His Passion

After earning a finance degree from Smith, Joe Kattan ’23 started in consulting but soon followed his entrepreneurial passion to acquire and run AppraiseItNow, a modern appraisal company for businesses and consumers.

Tell us about your path from graduation to your current job.

At the University of Maryland, I spent a lot of my time working on startup ventures in the B2B services and technology spaces (shoutout to the Dingman-Lamone Center!). While working on entrepreneurial endeavors throughout my time at UMD, I built a technical skill set within the No-code automation and AI spaces; I knew I wanted to apply these skills to something entrepreneurial but wasn't sure exactly what problem I wanted to solve.

I thought consulting would be a great place to build professional skills, gain exposure to different industries, and meet incredible people. I was fortunate enough to land a strategy consulting role at Bain & Company after applying through HireSmith and spending months preparing for case interviews. At Bain, I worked on very interesting projects, primarily in growth strategy across industrials, aerospace & defense, and pharmaceuticals. While I learned a tremendous amount in my time there, I knew I wanted to go back to doing more entrepreneurial work.

As a next step, I was exploring starting a tech company from scratch, building a consulting business around automation and AI, or acquiring an existing business and improving its operations and marketing channels with my technical skills. Eventually, I decided to acquire AppraiseItNow, a business I was intimately familiar with from past work and my minority ownership in the company. Now, I'm leading the company as the only full-time employee with lots of incredible contractors and automated systems behind me!

Why did you decide to get a business degree and why did you choose the Smith School?

Since I was young, I was always interested in business. I grew up around entrepreneurs and business operators, and I wanted to continue on a similar path. I thought business school would offer an incredible foundation for working in or running a business, and the Smith School has done exactly that.

I chose UMD specifically for a few reasons. First, I appreciated that the size of the university offers such a wide breadth of courses; whether I took classes in other departments, the diversity of interests in the student body adds a richness to the culture of the school. Second, the Jewish community at UMD is vibrant, and it's one of the largest in the country. As an orthodox Jew, this was pivotal to my decision of where I would spend my 4 years of college.

What Smith resources or relationships played a role in your career journey?

Working on various ventures throughout my time at UMD, I was always in and out of the Dingman-Lamone Center for mentorship on Fridays or just getting advice from Lottie Byram, assistant director of community programs at the center. Additionally, I spent time engaging with Nima Farshchi and Dr. David Kirsch from the Center of Social Value Creation to work on ventures in the social impact space.

How has your Smith education helped you with your professional career? Were there specific classes, experiential projects, team projects, or internships that have been especially helpful to you?

The resources around Smith and UMD at large were incredibly helpful both as I worked through challenges as an entrepreneur and as I prepared for my role in consulting. What I think makes the Smith education unique is its practicality. The courses at Smith all come with real-world scenarios for analysis and exercises. Especially in my finance and operations courses, I appreciated the opportunity to work on complex yet applied formulas and calculations. Additionally, I had the chance to take classes in private equity and entrepreneurship within Smith and the engineering school; these opened my eyes to various industries and aspects of business I otherwise would have only had a surface-level understanding of.

What are some of the achievements that you are most proud of?

Landing the Associate Consultant position at Bain was something that came with a tremendous amount of hard work over my four years at UMD. On the entrepreneurial side, I am proud of my persistence through lots of ideas that didn't work out but ultimately led me to discover my skills in automation and AI and gave me the tools to operate my company today.

What advice would you give to current students?

Experiment early and often. I think this applies whether you'd like to start your own company or prefer something not business-related at all. I found that trying new things and not being afraid to fail quickly continued to open doors for me professionally and brought an aspect of self-awareness at the intersection of what I like to do and what the world needs. As a student, take the time to join more clubs, start more side projects, and take more classes in areas outside of your comfort zone!