McCormick junior Bennett Hensey said he’s always had a problem taking notes inside the lines.

As an engineering student, he said his notes and sketches didn’t work in a traditional, lined notebook, and he had trouble finding an alternative to fit his needs.

Hensey’s frustration inspired a startup, Unruled, that sells the product he couldn’t find: a spiral-bound notebook filled with blank pages to enhance visual notetaking.

Unruled has made more than $10,000 in revenue from its website, and will also start selling notebooks at Beck’s Bookstore, D&D Finer Foods and the BrewBike Shop in Annenberg Hall, said McCormick senior Jacob Morgan, the company’s CEO.

“I was never meant to think in lines, and it took me until college to realize that,” Hensey, the company’s chief operating officer, said in a July blog post on the Unruled website. “My dream is that Unruled can inspire more students to think confidently the way they were meant to think.”

The venture began as a group project for a Principles of Entrepreneurship class in Fall Quarter 2016, Hensey told The Daily. The original team included Morgan, Hensey, Christina Allen (SESP ’17) and Ellen Ehrsam (Communication ’17). As the quarter continued, Hensey said they realized they “didn’t just see it as a class project anymore” — their idea had the potential to grow into an actual business.

So, once the class ended, Unruled continued to grow. The team raised more than $6,400 on its Kickstarter page to create the first batch of 600 notebooks, which were sold online throughout Spring Quarter.

Over the summer, Morgan said he, Hensey and Communication senior Lexy Praeger participated in the Wildfire Pre-Accelerator Program at The Garage to grow their business.

Praeger, who joined the company as brand coordinator in Winter Quarter, said she uses the company’s website and Instagram to promote an “unruled lifestyle.”

“With the blank notebook, we’re trying to help people free their minds,” Praeger told The Daily. “To be unruled means don’t let anyone tell you how to think, just do your own thing, find yourself.”

The team also wanted to focus on environmental sustainability, said Morgan, a former Daily staffer. Unruled notebooks are made with some recycled materials, and the company partners with 1% for the Planet to donate 1 percent of annual profits to environmental organizations. Unruled also partners with the nonprofit One Tree Planted, which plants one tree for every three notebooks sold; so far, 200 trees have been planted on Unruled’s behalf, according to the company’s website.

Starting this quarter, Morgan said he has some “achievable but still aspirational” plans for Unruled. Morgan said he hopes to expand the company’s reach with an ambassador program to recruit representatives on other college campuses.

Unruled will soon launch another Kickstarter campaign to incorporate a new product, he said, like a marker bag or better pen. Essentially, Morgan said he hopes to build a brand identity that goes beyond notebooks.

“Anybody could come in … and make a blank notebook,” Morgan told The Daily. “But we want it to be that if you buy a product from us, you’re kind of buying something about yourself. You’re empowering yourself through our products.”

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Twitter: @madsburk