Contributed by Asher Herbstman
I’m Asher Herbstman, co-founder of Clear30, an app that helps people make intentional choices about their relationship with substances.
We’ve got a few Michigan alumni on the team and one student currently at Michigan, so the school’s been a real part of our story.
This whole thing – finding a mentor, getting sharper, figuring out what it really takes to build something – started with a DM on the Wolverine Entrepreneurs Hub. When I reached out to Alex Mitchell, we had already been working on Clear30 for a while. But I was at that stage where you realize building a company is way harder than you thought.
I had been watching videos of 23-year-olds selling SaaS apps from Miami penthouses, thinking, yeah, I can do that. Then actually doing it, I was like, oh, wait, this is way harder.
I had just graduated from Michigan with a film degree and was back in Ann Arbor trying to keep things moving. Most days, I was sitting at Starbucks, working from open to close, trying to figure out how to make revenue appear out of thin air. I was nervous about the uncertainty of all of it, but I knew one thing for sure. I didn’t want to end up working some B2B SaaS job or doing supply chain management.
We had a plan, a few users, and some traction, but we were nowhere close to product-market fit. We were offering the app for free and people still weren’t downloading it. I didn’t fully realize it then, but I was in that phase where you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s where I was when I found Alex.
My co-founder took a bus in from Wisconsin, and we met Alex at Misfit Coffee. Within ten minutes, I could tell this guy was different. He had built and sold companies, run product at big ones, invested in startups, but the thing that stood out was how grounded he was.
He didn’t make it about himself. He just listened, asked real questions, and wanted to help. We talked about what we were building and where we were stuck. By the time we left, I remember thinking, this guy actually gets it.
A few hours later, the first lesson showed up in my inbox.
Alex followed up on everything we talked about: intros, notes, resources. It was like he had taken mental screenshots during the conversation and just executed.
He didn’t have to do any of it. He wasn’t getting paid. He just did it.
That moment stuck with me. I’ve always worked hard, but seeing how fast and precisely he moved reset my expectations of what productivity looks like.
I started watching him more closely: how he worked, how he talked to people, how he handled things. He was at this place in life where I wanted to be one day, and I was fascinated by what he did differently to get there. Seeing him operate up close broke through a lot of the noise you hear online about “grind culture.” It gave me a real model for how successful people actually move – calm, deliberate, and confident without needing to prove anything.
Eventually, Alex joined our board, and we started having regular check-ins. Those calls became something I looked forward to, not just because I could show him what we’d built, but because he helped us see what we weren’t seeing.
It was a totally different experience from trying to learn through YouTube videos. Alex actually knew our company. He had experience, he understood how we worked, and he helped us stay realistic about what mattered.
We started focusing on the small, unexciting things that actually moved the needle: better ads, better onboarding, better conversion. Slowly, things compounded. We went from barely any revenue to over $45,000 in October alone.
It wasn’t one big breakthrough. It was months of small, consistent wins stacking on top of each other.
Alex has helped with everything, from understanding fundraising and leadership to just understanding how to think. But what’s made the biggest difference is seeing how he operates.
My girlfriend’s an engineer, and she still teases me about getting a film degree from Michigan. She says TikTok ads don’t count as filmmaking, which is fair. But whenever she says that, I think about how Michigan gave me this connection—someone who cared enough to help and who’s brought so many other Michigan people into my orbit.
For all the things people say about college being a waste, this one connection alone made Michigan worth it.
If you’re reading this and you’re building something at UofM, and you feel like there’s more to learn, I would suggest reaching out to someone through the Wolverine Entrepreneurs Hub. It could be one of the best five seconds you spend.
That one message made my whole journey a lot more real, and a lot more possible.