By Tyler Dahlgren

The Startup 

The Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management houses some of the best and brightest minds at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It’s a hub for innovation, a place for dreamers and doers.

Hudl started there. Other startups you’ve heard of, too. FindU, the brainchild of three recent Nebraska high school graduates and current Raikes School students, could very well be the next to make it.

This story starts in the fall of 2023, when freshmen Kenny Morales and Wilson Overfield partnered on a class project that challenged students to find a market and solve a problem within said market. 

“We had just finished high school and had gone through the whole college application and search process, so that was a problem that was fresh in our minds,” said Overfield.

Neither particularly enjoyed the experience, for a variety of reasons, so they set off on a mission to streamline the process. What they came up with was FindU, a college search platform that they say is built for how students want to find schools today in 2025.

“Every student has goals, objectives, different things they want to accomplish,” said Morales. “Maybe for some students it’s going to UNL. For some students it might be going to Harvard. For some, it’s getting a good job. There are so many paths they can take. If we could personalize it, and help them explore every possible path, that was ultimately our goal.”

They completed the project, earned the grade, and then put it in the rearview mirror. That is, until Morales started working on his designer portfolio that following summer.

“The more and more I worked on FindU, the more I was like ‘Wait, there’s something here,’” Morales said.

Morales started bouncing ideas off of Tatum Terwilliger, a pragmatic classmate at Raikes with some pretty good ideas herself. Overfield was more than willing to jump back in, and the trio began putting a freshman year entrepreneurial project into practice. 

FindU was coming to life. Think Tinder for prospective college students but much deeper and more interactive, with an interface that has been designed to be utilized by high school teachers, counselors and universities, too.

“Our goal is really just to help make it as easy as possible for students to get the information on schools that they think might be a good fit for them, and also to explore schools that they wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to explore,” said Overfield. “We all know how difficult the college search process can be, and there are a lot of students who end up at schools that don’t work out for them, or maybe the scholarship package isn’t quite as good as they anticipated and now they either have to transfer or stick it out at a place that isn’t for them.”

FindU can help prevent those unfortunate situations, and it’s as easy as logging in and swiping right. Traditional college visits are fun and all, but they’re quite an investment of both money and time. FindU puts universities from all over the country at a high school student’s fingertips. 

It’s an in-depth and thorough tool, and it’s as user-friendly as you can imagine.

“That’s where we stand out,” Morales said. “We’re actually partnering with specific colleges, whether it’s the college of engineering or the college of business or whatever it might be, at these schools. You’re not just looking at UNL as a whole, but you’re actually looking at the college you’re going to be a part of. It’s suited for each individual that uses it.”

The Dreamer

Wilson Overfield is full of big ideas, and he’s rarely shy to share.

“He thinks up these concepts, and then throws them at Kenny to see what sticks,” said Terwilliger. “Then those two workshop the idea, iron out the kinks, and bring it to me to see if it’s something that’ll actually work.”

That cycle is constantly repeating itself, the motor that propels this already adequately-driven trio, and Overfield often plays the role of ignitor. Born in Omaha, the valedictorian of Ralston High School’s Class of 2023 has always been a dreamer, and a gifted one at that. At times, especially in those middle school years, Overfield found it difficult to focus.

“Middle school Wilson was honestly not the best student, I would say,” Overfield said with a smile and half a sigh. “I definitely enjoyed the idea of school. Seeing my friends, spending time with them and laughing in class, that was fun to me, but the rest wasn’t as appealing. But my parents always instilled in me the importance of education, so they were the ones that got me to lock in more.”

By high school, he was humming. When the time came to start applying to schools, he rightfully swung high, starting with the Ivies.

“I applied to all these top schools and I didn’t get in anywhere, other than UNL and the Raikes School,” Overfield said. “I was down. I felt like I disappointed my mom at the time, but then I decided to make the best of it.” 

Turns out, the Raikes School was a really good fit. 

“It aligned with my interest in business and computer science,” he said. “I’ve met Kenny and Tatum and a lot of wonderful people in the process. It’s been really good.”

It’s the perfect place for someone with big ideas. The perfect place for a dreamer.

The Orchestrator 

Spend half an hour with Kenny Morales, and you’d swear the guy is too high-spirited and savvy about this scholastic-minded startup stuff to slip through the cracks, but that’s exactly what almost happened. 

Not that he wouldn’t have landed square on his feet, he most certainly would have, but there’s an alternate reality where Grand Island’s 2023 valedictorian is running his own business as opposed to entering his third year at the Raikes School.

“I didn’t want to make a huge list of schools and do the entire thing,” Morales said. “To be honest, I didn’t even really want to go to college. I wanted to start my own business, but I told my mom, ‘If I’m able to get a full ride I’ll go, obviously, because why wouldn’t I?’”

Growing up, Morales wasn’t intrinsically motivated when it came to school. He was bright, gifted even, and, for the most part, unentertained. He earned the grades without paying very much attention and could be, by his own admission, an obnoxious presence in the classroom at times.

Still, the potential was right there on display. History teacher Tracy Jakubowski saw it, and scheduled a meeting with Morales’s counselor. At the time, he wasn’t in any advanced classes. That would soon change.

“That next year I took three math classes and a bunch of AP courses,” Morales said. “I didn’t have any requirement for all that stuff, but they just took a bet on me and it paid off. I’m grateful for that.”

If Overfield is the dreamer, Morales is the orchestrator. 

He has a knack for bringing big ideas to life, and in this group there’s no shortage of big ideas.

“Operate on about forty-percent delusion,” Morales likes to say. “Don’t be one-hundred percent delusional and think that you’re going to capture everything and totally succeed in everything you do, but have just enough delusion to think that you might.”

The Facilitator

Tatum Terwilliger was a freshman at Lincoln Southwest when the pandemic stopped the world in its tracks back in 2020. For an uber-involved student who always sat at the front of the class and raised her hand first, that hit like a ton of bricks.

“All of a sudden I’m sitting in my living room, looking into a camera and trying my best to stay in touch, I guess,” she said. “My mind would wander and I had a difficult time paying attention. Getting over that hurdle was a lot for me and made me realize I’m more of a hands-on person and I could empathize with people who can’t learn by just reading a textbook.”

Terwilliger was in one box one moment and another the next, and that was okay, she learned. There are a million boxes, after all. That’s probably what drew her to Kenny and Wilson’s project.

“That’s one of the things that got me interested in FindU, is how we’re not trying to put every student in one box,” she said. “Instead, we see that there are a lot of different paths a person can take after high school, and we want to be able to open those paths for Gen Z.”

Speaking of paths, there’s a part of Terwilliger that wishes hers was slightly different. Both of her parents come from Western Nebraska. She grew up hearing about small town life and wondered what that would be like.

“I kind of always wished I was in a smaller school district, but I had a great experience at LSW and it worked out nonetheless,” said Terwilliger, the daughter of a superintendent who grew up around the school calendar. “I was a scholarly student, but more than anything I was really involved. That’s where my time as a student lied; Unified sports, different student leadership organizations, athletic leadership organizations, sports. I just had to be doing something every minute of every day.”

She’s a forward thinker, the facilitator of all those big ideas we’ve told you about, and she’s educationally-inclined to boot. She knows FindU’s target audiences, because she grew up revering them.

“That was kind of instilled in us, the notion of respecting teachers,” Terwilliger said. “That was a no-brainer in our household. If something went wrong on an assignment or something, it wasn’t the teacher’s fault. It gave me an appreciation for everything that teachers actually do for their students.” 

That first summer, while Morales was at home designing the FindU interface, he called on Terwilliger for advice nearly every single day. Not only would she be an excellent addition to the team, he thought, but her knowledge and familiarity with the ins and outs of education would be beyond valuable.

Morales thought correctly. Terwilliger isn’t just a project manager. She’s a project manager with a passion.

“It helps that we’re all very optimistic and are able to be cheerleaders for each other throughout this whole startup, which is crazy in and of itself that we’re getting something off the ground like this,” she said. “Working out the kinks and seeing the designs come to life, all of that is really exciting.”

The Next Step

It’s been two years since the idea for FindU hatched, and whether the app takes off and revolutionizes the college search process or not, the journey has been both memorable and worthwhile.

The trio has brought on new team members, and right now they’re hard at work fine-tuning the app’s “Discover” feature and the dashboard for school counselors. FindU’s latest update included an enhanced version of the matching model for schools, and the team is on the brink of a full launch.

“There’s a lot of things we want to do, and the Raike School program has essentially given us an investment and some additional team members to help develop the product and push it forward throughout the next school year,” said Overfield. “We’re excited, but grounded. In this space, you kind of have to be. You have to be as confident as you are humble, because you are putting yourself out there with a real possibility of failing.”

A primary focus right now is getting the word out and developing relationships with school districts in Nebraska. Promoting the product on social media is good and all, but forging connections with administrators and counselors is where they know they’ll make the most headway. 

“If we’re able to open those lines of communication with high schools and gather feedback from them, we’ll be more than willing to make changes as needed,” Terwilliger said. “That’s the nice thing about where we are as developers of FindU and being in Nebraska. It’s a close community. Everything’s a small world in Nebraska.”

The idea of meeting educators and students from different places across the state is an exciting one for somebody like Terwilliger, who always secretly envied the kids growing up in small Nebraska towns. 

“I think it’s amazing, the idea of reaching people from Omaha and the huge metropolitan areas to Ogallala or Perkins County, all through this one tool that’s able to give them the best match for the future,” she said. “It’s really exciting.”

The FindU team would love to hop on a Zoom or visit a school district in-person to share their story and offer advice and encouragement to high school students with aspirations similar to theirs. 

“FindU really came to us from collaborating on a project, working on it outside of school and spending time together on weekends,” Morales said. “Just find a few people, they don’t even have to be overly technically or business smart, but just find a group of dreamers and put something together. That’s all we did.”

To learn more, visit www.JoinFindU.com and search for FindU in the App Store!