Lehigh Alumni Startup Named to Forbes’ Finest

Case studies give students a chance to solve problems facing real companies. However, in a fast-changing world, it can be hard to keep the business curriculum fresh and the questions relevant. Thanks to three Lehigh alumni, business students now have easier access to real cases provided by companies including KIND Healthy Snacks, CustomInk, and Uber and are providing solutions to its executives.

Real Time Cases (RTC), a company co-founded by Jake Schaufeld ’15, Jordan Levy ’14 and Andrew Pohle ’12, provides current case material to the college classroom through a virtual digital format so students can gain more walk-on experience needed for jobs after graduation. Included in more than 100 undergraduate and graduate classrooms across the country and internationally, these real business cases simulate what it is like to be employed and receive actual assignments from top-level management.

For this innovative educational concept, Schaufeld, Levy and Pohle have been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30: Education List for 2017. Real Time Cases has also been named as one of the top 50 startup companies for 2017 by Startup Grind.

“Being recognized by Forbes brings a lot of credibility to what we are doing. The honor is like being published in the academic world. It shows people care about real world and experiential learning,” said Schaufeld, whose higher education clients include Wake Forest, Syracuse and Brigham Young universities.

Schaufeld, an earth and environmental science major, and Levy, a finance and accounting major, were entrepreneurship minors at Lehigh and partnered in their Entrepreneurship 312 class to develop Levy’s idea of using video to bring company executives into the classroom. Live case learning is robust at Lehigh, but typically happens by executives speaking on-site in the classroom. Levy, who prefers live-case learning more than dated textbook-based material, wanted to use technology to expand that experience on a broader scale.

The partners worked the following summer as part of the Baker Institute’s student business incubator program at the Ben Franklin TechVentures facility. Levy focused on developing faculty relationships, and Schaufeld established relationships with top business executives.

Levy graduated in August 2014 while Schaufeld continued as a full-time student, but the duo still tested their cases during the fall semester by providing their content free of charge to Lehigh professors and their students in the College of Business and Economics. Students interacted with executives who brought questions about topics such as business ethics, clientele opportunity and supply chain and logistics.
Pohle, who majored in bioengineering, was providing Levy business advice while working in his home state of Texas. He became the third partner of RTC in February 2015 and built the public-facing side of the business and the marketing, editorial and web development of the company.

In just a few years, the company has grown exponentially with 13 full-time employees and an expansion of in-house services which includes aggregating large forms of data to create easily digestible reports for companies. RTC has partnered with executives from more than 40 companies, while students gain experience and expand their professional network. —Dawn Thren