Across UC Berkeley — the No. 1 school for startups and founders — tech and business enthusiasts ponder new AI startups and business ventures. But from the same campus, students Rex Thrasher and Sebastian Morris pull up to a local backyard, landscaping tools in tow.
This year, seniors Thrasher and Morris decided to trade their initial plans of an internship-filled summer break for entrepreneurship and start a local landscaping business: Bay Groundworks.
As a mathematics and mechanical engineering major, respectively, Thrasher and Morris spend much of their time in tech-heavy environments and find stepping out into the neighborhood and spending time outside “refreshing.”
“Our workload is so hard and we’re surrounded by (things like AI) all the time,” Thrasher said. “But I mean, it’s nice to get away and work with your hands. At least for me, it’s my favorite pastime.”
The inspiration for the business sparked from each of their previous work experiences and relationships with nature.
For Thrasher, that was working on an apple orchard and his interest in sustainability. For Morris, his experience was hands-on work through family mentorships.
“My father was a contractor for the past 30 years, so I’ve always been working with my hands on construction sites. He did a lot of landscaping stuff in the past, so I also got experience in that as well,” Morris said.
According to Thrasher and Morris, running Bay Groundworks required working on a completely different set of work than most startups demand.
Their schedule varies from doing regular maintenance visits for local homeowners to sourcing materials for jobs. Thrasher said sometimes their job brings them further than Berkeley, such as when they went to Mexico to source stone.
“We kind of split (the work) evenly where we can, but we both want to learn the same skills, so we’re crossing over a lot of stuff … I handle most of the outreach for landscaping. He handles stuff for the production company, like outreach, and then as work goes, we both show up — we’re basically foremen — and then hire people as needed. He does more hiring, and I’m more client facing,” Thrasher said.
Thrasher said the business teaches him many hard skills — skills he thinks interning simply cannot teach, and that they “learn a lot of hard skills,” including how to run a crew and quote jobs, which he said are things “you don’t really get out of some other startups.”
This article was authored by Ananya Adya and Jonah Shea, participants of The Daily Californian’s High School Journalism Intensive.