The very first PESS event of the year kicked off last week in Yen’s Wesley Forum in front of a packed audience eager to learn about business development from an individual with close ties to The Pennington School. PESS, which stands for Pennington Entrepreneurship Speaker Series, invites entrepreneurs to campus to share their insights and perspectives with students, and the opening speaker of the 2025-26 academic year was himself once a Red Hawk.

In his talk, entitled “Building Startups in Emerging Markets,” Nick Bunn ’15 shared from his own forays into the process of building your own business. While still a student at Harvard, Bunn founded the men’s skincare brand, Frontman, which focused on quick-acting acne solutions. Later, he cofounded 98Strong with Andrew Mavis ’16, another Pennington alum; as one of the first companies helping students capitalize on the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) era, 98Strong seeks to connect student athletes with leading brands for sponsorship within the Gen Z market. 

Before inviting questions from the audience, Bunn attempted to “demystify” the concept of entrepreneurship, explaining that it is not necessarily a linear path. He encouraged budding entrepreneurs to “embrace failure” and not to wait for one “big idea” to get started. “Your ideas don’t have to be massive,” offered Bunn, who confessed to keeping an open note in his smart phone throughout college where he could record his random ideas and thoughts as they popped into his head. He also shared different brainstorming frameworks known as “problem space”— looking to fix something that feels broken, annoying, or too time-consuming—and “solution space”—things the world needs—as launchpads for new ideas and concepts. 

Teacher of Economics Holly Jones began the PESS program last spring with the goal of connecting students interested in traditional entrepreneurial activities, as well as social entrepreneurship, with people from the extended Pennington School community who have had some experience in those spaces. According to Jones, “entrepreneurs are everywhere, in every space, and they frequently do useful and incredible work that no one notices. I want our students to see that with a good idea, resources, and some grit, they too can join the ranks and make their mark on the world.”