Northern Virginia · High Point, NC
I am a sophomore finance student at High Point University, an entrepreneur, and an investor focused on building businesses and helping others build theirs. I have launched more than twenty direct-to-consumer brands, helped clients build and scale their own, and built a community helping early-stage entrepreneurs use AI and automation. Four months into my freshman year, I founded Parkevo and helped grow it from an idea into a funded parking technology company with a live campus deployment, a growing institutional pipeline, and opportunities to pitch on national stages. Long term, I want to become an investor and speaker, backing ambitious founders, helping them build, and sharing what I learn along the way.
As seen at
Start here
Parkevo, a parking technology company with a live campus deployment, and the twenty-plus direct-to-consumer brands I ran before it.
Finance at High Point University's Earl N. Phillips School of Business, and from the founders, investors, and operators I meet through competitions and campus.
Studying markets and companies, investing my own capital, and learning how to recognize value and great founders early.
By the numbers
How I work
Starting businesses taught me that you can think about an idea forever and still not know if it works. Put something into the world, pay attention to what happens, and adjust from there.
Putting my own money behind decisions taught me to think beyond how much I could make. Before taking a risk, understand what happens if you are wrong. The best opportunities often have meaningful upside with a downside you can live with.
Hargrave Military Academy taught me that discipline shows up in the details—being early, prepared, and doing things right when nobody is checking. Results change; your standard should not.
Building Parkevo has put me in rooms with founders, executives, and operators who have decades more experience than me. I have learned that I gain more by asking the right question and listening than by trying to prove what I know. You do not have to be the smartest person in the room—you have to leave the room smarter than you entered it.
I am always glad to hear from founders, students, and anyone working on something early.
About me
A fifth-grade field trip set one goal, a military academy tested it, and walking away from it led me to business, finance, and building my own company. The whole story, including the part where I gave up the identity I had spent years building, is below.
Read the full story
That journey took me from Union Grove in Georgia to Maury in Virginia and eventually Hargrave Military Academy, one of the top basketball programs in the country.
Hargrave gave me discipline, but eventually I learned something harder: being good at something does not mean it has to define you forever. I was falling out of love with basketball, and walking away meant leaving behind the identity I had spent years building. It also gave me the space to figure out what genuinely interested me.
I found that in business, finance, and investing. I started building brands, putting my own money behind ideas, and becoming obsessed with how companies grow and where value is created. I came to High Point University to study finance, and four months into my freshman year, I founded Parkevo. Building a real company while studying how businesses operate and investing in them has given me three different perspectives on the same question: what makes something worth building, backing, and believing in?
The part I value most is the network I have built along the way. Entrepreneurship has put me in conversations with founders, investors, executives, operators, and students I never would have met otherwise. I have learned to speak less, ask better questions, and listen to people who have already been where I am trying to go.
Basketball may have been the first plan, but finding something beyond it taught me not to tie my value to one path.
High Point recognized that work with the Pagon Family Grant, and I completed the university's Certification in Foundational Life Skills. I am also a member of the university's NAACP chapter and the National Association of Black Accountants.
Most of what has moved me forward came from people further along than me. Founders, chief executives, investors, and operators have given me time, direct feedback, and a clearer view of how companies are actually built and led. Professors and university officials at High Point have done the same, pushing my thinking in class, opening doors on campus, and staying in my corner outside of both. I try to come to those conversations with better questions than the last time.
The goal now is bigger: keep building, keep investing, surround myself with people ahead of me, and eventually use what I learn to help others build what they believe in.
Involvement
Founding member, Director of Relations and Growth, and Student Government Representative. I am part of the group building the club from the ground up. As the founder of Parkevo, I also bring the founder’s side of the table: what it takes to build a company, pitch it, and raise money for it, which gives members a view of early-stage companies that is hard to get from the outside. I lead the club’s outside relationships, bringing in investors, founders, and operators as speakers and building connections with firms our members can learn from and work alongside. I also represent the club in Student Senate as it works toward its campus charter, and help shape recruiting and programming for its first year.
Member.
Member.
Member.
Member, High Point University chapter.
Work
More than twenty brands taught me how to find customers, test ideas, manage capital, and learn from the market. Parkevo is where I am putting those lessons to work for the long run.
Ventures
Parkevo is a parking intelligence company. We use edge AI to read occupancy space by space, so operators know not just how many vehicles are present, but exactly which spaces are available. I founded it in December 2025 and run it as CEO, alongside co-founder Brianna Stinespring.
Before Parkevo, e-commerce was my first real education in business. It taught me what happens when real customers, real money, and real decisions meet, and how quickly the market exposes a bad assumption.
The biggest lesson was learning to separate conviction from evidence. ROAS, contribution margin, and acquisition cost do not care how much you believe in an idea. Read the numbers honestly, be willing to be wrong, and move when the evidence changes.
I post about what I am building while I am building it. Less highlight reel, more working notes, so the people watching get the version I wish someone had shown me.
Education
The line from a Georgia high school to a finance degree in North Carolina was never straight, and the detour through a military academy is the part that changed how I work.
The path
Earl N. Phillips School of Business, with a Minor in Entrepreneurship through the David S. Congdon School of Entrepreneurship. I started Parkevo in my first December on campus and have been running it alongside coursework since.
A year at Hargrave, which ran one of the top basketball programs in the country. Military academy structure, a national schedule, and a level of accountability I had not met before.
It is the single year that changed how I work. Discipline stopped being something I talked about and became the default setting.
Finished high school in Norfolk after the move from Georgia. Basketball was the center of it, and the move meant proving myself to a new program from a standing start.
Where I started. Georgia is home before Virginia was, and this is where the Division I goal took shape, a couple of years after a fifth-grade field trip to Florida State put the idea in my head.
Ahead
I want to spend the next chapter learning how great companies are built from the inside. Long term, I want to take that experience to the other side of the table, backing founders with capital, judgment, and experience earned from building myself.
The plan
I want to understand what makes a company worth backing before I ever write the check. Building from the operator side is teaching me what a pitch deck cannot: how founders make decisions, allocate limited resources, respond when assumptions are wrong, and keep moving when the answer is not obvious. Eventually, I want to bring that experience to the other side of the table.
Being around a talented speaker growing up, and later hearing accomplished founders, executives, and leaders speak through High Point University, showed me how much one conversation can change the way someone thinks. It made me want to speak one day too—not for the stage itself, but to pass along lessons that might save someone else time, mistakes, and money.
For now, the work is earning something worth saying.
Contact
Email is the fastest way to reach me, and I read every message. Founders, students, investors, and anyone building something early are all welcome.
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This site shares my personal experience. It is not professional advice of any kind.
Everything on this site reflects my personal experience and opinions. It is provided for general informational purposes only and is not financial, investment, tax, legal, accounting, or other professional advice, and it is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any security or interest in any company.
I am a student, not a licensed financial adviser, broker, attorney, or accountant. Business and investing carry risk, including loss of capital. Results I describe are my own and are not typical, guaranteed, or a prediction of what anyone else will experience. Past results do not indicate future outcomes.
Before acting on anything you read here, do your own research and consult a qualified professional who understands your situation. Any decision you make is your own, and I accept no liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of this site or its contents.
Last updated September 2026. Questions? Email thevantaylor@outlook.com.
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Last updated September 2026. Questions? Email thevantaylor@outlook.com.
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The views expressed on this site are mine alone. They do not represent High Point University, the Earl N. Phillips School of Business, the David S. Congdon School of Entrepreneurship, Parkevo Technologies LLC, the Venture Capital Club, the National Association of Black Accountants, the NAACP, or any other organization I am affiliated with, and nothing here should be read as a statement on their behalf.
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Last updated September 2026. Questions? Email thevantaylor@outlook.com.
