Snow Scholars, a startup launched in 2022 by University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Jake Piekarski, aims to help students pay for college by employing them to shovel snow during the winter season.
“I saw through community forums and local groups that snow shoveling wasn’t just convenient — it was essential,” Piekarski told the Daily Cardinal in an email where he said he used “chat[GPT] for a write up.”
“That gap between what the community needed and what students needed, flexible work, really sparked the idea for Snow Scholars,” he said.
Piekarski said Snow Scholars employs around 115 UW students and 650 total students across Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The company website states it currently serves 14 schools, but Piekarski told the Cardinal there are only 11 college towns they do service in—a discrepancy.
At first, the company struggled with software and being able to process routing, dispatching, communications and payments. Now that the company provides its services for over 800 households, Piekarski has switched from manually inputting everything to building new technology for his company.
Snow Scholars claims to be the highest paying campus job, but students have to provide their own transportation and snow clearing materials. The company provides students with a $25 “equipment credit” after they’ve shoveled their 15th home, according to their website.
The young company has received some backlash online, notably on Reddit, with both alleged workers and customers of the company protesting prices and workloads.
Reddit user “future__fires” wrote in 2025 the hourly pay the company promises students is wrong, the workload is unfair and customers are sometimes charged without receiving service.
“They lie to you about how quickly you can do each house, and require you to do six every time you work,” they wrote. “They said shoveling and salting six houses by hand would take about three hours, which is absolutely not true. A bunch of people who own houses in the area commented and said the company just never showed up despite still billing them.”
Reddit users did not respond to a request for comment.
Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban invested $150,000 for 20% equity in the company in late 2024 and told the Cardinal in an email the negative comments made about Snow Scholars are “ridiculous and slanderous.”
“Like every company with contractors, mistakes happen,” Cuban said. “They are a young business and are doing their best.”
Piekarski said providing work opportunities is a central part of Snow Scholar’s mission, and he believes a job should fit a student’s life with shorter shifts and higher pay.
“Some of our top earners choose to work as much as possible and make $5,000+ per month during heavy snow periods,” Piekarski said. “It’s meaningful income, on students’ terms, without sacrificing school.”
According to Piekarski, Snow Scholars has grown from 30 customers to 800 and counting. The company has now implemented a contractor bench to make up for the unpredictability that comes with hiring students.
City Editor Alaina Walsh contributed to this report.
