Max Baron ’17

On Schedule

Entrepreneur Max Baron ’17 and partners aim to make the calendaring and events platform Saturn the “first social calendar.”

BY DEBBIE KANE

It’s a familiar story. College classmates introduce a social networking platform that enables students to connect with one another. The program’s popularity explodes, catches the attention of the press and venture capitalists, and the duo leaves college to run the new business.

Except this story isn’t about Facebook. It’s about Saturn, a calendar-based social platform developed from an app Dylan Diamond created for students at his Connecticut high school to share their schedules. Later, as a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, Diamond demonstrated the app for classmate Max Baron ’17. Baron says he was “blown away by the engagement and potential to extend the product’s core utility.” In 2019, he and Diamond left Wharton to build Saturn. By April 2021, the startup had raised more than $44 million in financing from technology investors, ranging from venture firms General Catalyst, Insight Partners, and Coatue to Jeff Bezos.

“If we’re successful, we’ll be the world’s first social calendar,” says Baron, now Saturn’s COO and CSO.

Named for the Roman god of time, Saturn enables high school students to manage and share their schedules, including class, club, and athletic commitments, as well as host events and chat with friends. By January 2019, the pair had launched unique apps for 17 high schools in the Northeast, and by April, they had consolidated to a single app and expanded to support more than 50 schools.

By the time the Saturn co-founders were named to the 2021 Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Education list, 60,000 students at 100 schools were using the app. Today, Saturn supports more than 1,000 high schools across the U.S. Baron’s influencer marketing experience has helped drive growth as student ambassadors at each high school introduce the app to peers. Saturn’s calendars are community-specific to each participating high school and presently can’t be viewed by students outside of a user’s school (or by teachers and administrators).

Baron displayed his entrepreneurial chops before he was in high school. When he was 11, the New York City native launched a subscription-based fresh cookie business to cover the cost of a MacBook. As a Fifth Former at St. Paul’s, he started PrepReps, an influencer marketing company connecting high school and college students with clothing and tech brands — from his dorm room. Participating on the School’s debate team beginning as a Third Former and later captaining the team as a Sixth Former refined his critical thinking and reasoning skills.

“Both at Wharton and in my work at Saturn, I realized I leaned on those skills,” Baron says. “The ability to quickly analyze a problem and effectively communicate are skills I still rely on daily.”

As a Sixth Former, Baron turned from PrepReps to a full-time social media consultancy, working with brands such as T-Mobile and Beats by Dr. Dre, where he advised their C-Suite executives. After his freshman year at Wharton, he was hired as a managing director at Havas, one of the largest integrated marketing agencies in the U.S., to helm their youth marketing offerings. After meeting Diamond in September 2018, the two began working on what would become Saturn, moved into an apartment together, set up four computers, and — fueled by their vision and lots of Red Bull — got to work.

“We’re the real-time status and events platform in U.S. high schools,” Baron says. “Our retention and engagement metrics are incredibly strong, comparable to many of the preeminent social apps, and driven by the profound utility we’re able to provide users on a daily basis.”

The company’s future looks bright. Based in Manhattan, Saturn has more than 40 employees, many of whom have joined from some of the world’s largest tech companies, and is growing quickly. Baron’s goal is to make Saturn the first calendar built around the friends who matter most — and to eclipse legacy giants like Outlook and Google as the calendar of choice.

“We’re presently focused on bringing Saturn to every high school student in the United States,” Baron says, “then we’ll pursue opportunities to expand into new verticals and geographies from there.”