NY Times Asks Where is Best for Learning Entrepreneurship?

In a section called tool kit, NY Times writer Paul Brown offer’s Fortune Magazine’s findings on where the right place to learn entrepreneurship is. From undergrad and grad to online and executive ed; the article lays out some programs to think about. Nowhere in the article does it actually look at the broader campus to determine if a school is a good place to be an entrepreneur.

BTW, the article quotes the great piece by George Gendron article that we posted last week. Nice to see my blogging is on par with the NY Times (if not ahead of them on this topic).

Undergrad Views on Social Networks, Music

This post over at Feld Thoughts gives great insights into the use of social networks and music consumption. Moreover, the focus group took place at U of Michigan (I am an alumn).  Here are five insights from the blog post,

1. I asked how many of them used other social networks, or similar things, Flickr, Twitter, etc..  Shockingly 2 people indicated they used Twitter, 10 used MySpace about 20 used Flickr.  I was blown away.  My guess would be that they were using several networks.  MySpace was deemed “has been” material. Even for pictures, they are all using Facebook.
2. I asked how much of their “email” traffic was on Facebook and the vast majority said somewhere around 20% and growing. Many of they wanted my opinion on the Microsoft investment with most everyone thinking it was stupid. None of them could think of an applicable business model for Facebook and they all claimed they’d seen little to no advertising.  This was interesting in that there was a strong visceral reaction to the MSFT investment.
3. I asked how many of them “bought music legally.”  No more that 15-20% indicated that they bought music legally.
4. I asked how many of them “stole music” – 100%.  And all but a couple indicated that a majority of their music was stolen.
5. Biggest concern of stealing music was not getting caught, it was that they “felt badly” for stealing it.

For the Love of Entrepreneurship and Competition

An article in the NY Times about PayPal founder and restless millionaire Max Levchin has gotten lots of coverage. Richard Florida has it over on his blog, multiple articles/posts at WSJ  (including the wealth blog and Wendy Bounds). From the longer piece, at the WSJ, related to story of the Nantucket Nectar founders (who met in college),

“I’m a crazy competitive person, so there’s no way I’m stopping,” Mr. First says. “I like being in the trenches.”

Call them serial-preneurs. While some entrepreneurs struggle their whole lives to bring one idea or product to market, there’s another breed: those who do it once, twice or three times more, disproving the notion of beginner’s luck. In some cases, the brands and people are household names, such as Steve Jobs with Apple, Pixar and NeXT. But the ranks also are populated with lesser-known entrepreneurs who fly under the radar, hitting one start-up home run after the other.

From Wendy Bounds,

It’s a huge oversight to chalk up entrepreneurs’ motivation to big bucks. There’s much more going on here. That’s why there are so many serial entrepreneurs starting new businesses again and again.

Don’t miss the part in the NYT story where PayPal’s founder confesses that, during a stint at a venture-capital firm, he “took this perverse pleasure in seeing if I could make someone cry” during VC meetings with entrepreneurs.

Wonder if this uber-competition spells trouble for the next generation?

Are you trying to prove something about yourself as an entrepreneur. Being on a campus is a great place for redefining oneself and I believe this is one of the reasons there are more and more entrepreneurs launching on campuses.

 

Facebook On Its Way to Microsoft, Dell, Google Status

With Microsoft buying a piece of Facebook last week, the valuation was set at $15 billion. Not bad for a student entrepreneur who viewed his  campus an an ecosystem and as a market to launch his business. Zuckerberg is hot and keeps getting hotter, but it remains to be seen if he can reach the heights of the biggest (by company size) campus entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Brin/Page. BTW, the value is 1/2 to Fedex and 1/3 of the way to Yahoo.

Online Monthly Contest

I recently highlighted the site vator.tv –where entrepreneurs pitch their venture’s with video and there are niche competitions. Here is another online site, Ideablob.com, offering contests for business ideas. Found this via Dane Carlson’s blog. The original piece is from BusinessWeek. BTW, Ideablob.com is ‘inspired by Advanta’ — a commercial financial firm that offers lots of small biz credit cards.

E-Commerce BizPlanComp — Win 50K Cash

This e-commerce contest is put on by Art Technology Group (Nasdaq: ARTQ), a maker of a suite of e-commerce software. The winner gets 50K in cash and the ‘people’s choice’ winner gets 10K. Most businesses in the US launch with less than 1oK, btw.

“The ATG e-Commerce Ingenuity Business Plan Competition is open to individuals or teams of e-commerce entrepreneurs, as well as seed or early-stage companies. To qualify as seed or early-stage, annual revenues or monies raised to date must be less than $100,000.”

This sound like a nice, niche contest. Deadline is 1/30/08. Here are the faqs.

A New Angle On College Sports Offers Opp for Entrepreneurs

A piece in today’s WSJ presents a great new opportunity for campus entrepreneurs. Writer Ann Zimmerman describes a new college sporting activity: The National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship. This years event featured 83 two-person teams drawn from college fishing clubs across the country. Don’t think there is much $$ in fishing? Turns out that there are now two pro tours offering over $1 million in prize money each. The top 5 anglers made at least $250,000 last year.

Beware, however, while this sport doesn’t appear as dangerous as college football, Arizona State U’s fishing coach, Katrina DeHaven, says that competitive fishing has its own risks, “There are three occupational hazards: skin cancer, high cholesterol, and hemorrhoids.”

If you read the entire piece, you will see that the fishing population is shrinking and older and that those who sell to fisherman need young consumers. Check out all the sponsors on the Championship’s website — looks like there is money chasing this college, fishing demographic.

Scottish Student Entrepreneur Provides Super Jams

Fraser Doherty, an 18 year old Scottish dude, who was attending Strathclyde University, is growing a big business with his Super Jams, a healthy, new spin on jams (I don’t know the difference between jelly and jam). Here is the story from the Daily Record. He has scored a big distribution with the Tesco supermarket chain. His secret is that he flavors his jams (yes, based on his grandma’s recipe) with fruit juice instead of sugar and that he includes blackcurrants, blueberries and ginger. (Perhaps someone will come up with caffeinated Jams? — we seem to want to put ‘energy’ into everything). Doherty will be representin’ Britain at the Global Student Entrepreneur awards in the US. From the piece,

Tesco jam and preserves buyer Danielle Peirce said: “Fraser’s jams have injected new life into one of the world’s oldest foods, which have been around since at least Roman times.

“Some younger people associate traditional jams and preserves with something they’d find in their granny’s kitchen.

“But we think that by using so-called super fruits, Fraser has tapped into a potentially new audience.”

Are U Going After a Niche?

Off campus sellers see the campus as a niche, those who are on campus know there are a lotta ways to segment –sports fans, greek members, pre-law, pre-med, working students, dorm vs. off-campus dwellers, part-time students, commuters, etc.

Kim T. Gordon has a column at Entrepreneur.com, “A Niche to Grow,” that gets into the idea of picking new niches for existing businesses, but the tips apply to new ventures as well. Here is a piece,

Most successful marketing tales begin and end with a well-plumbed niche. In other words, the marketer has found the most-qualified group of prospects and motivated them to action. You’ll rarely see a company that’s risen to the top using a shotgun approach–targeting a mass audience indiscriminately–yet this is where many entrepreneurs trip up.

Failure to isolate the most-qualified niche can waste marketing funds, time and energy. I get e-mails and phone calls from entrepreneurs who tell me “everybody” can use their product or service. The trouble is, even the most well-financed business can’t afford to reach everybody at once. And even if they somehow could, their message would have to be so generic that many different types of prospects wouldn’t feel motivated to take action.

Tuition Up, Debt Up

 

 

According to the USA Today, “College Prices, Borrowing Up“. This means that more students may become entrepreneurs as making $7 an hour at a copy, coffee, or book shop makes a smaller dent in tuition. Alternatively, for those students it means opportunity — because there is pain. Pain for students, parents, others involved in higher ed. I just profiled a startup in the UK that is allowing grads to exchange community service for debt relief. MyRichUncle.com is another new model on this opportunity. Both ideas is interesting, but there are countless other ways/angles to take advantage of this opportunity. BTW, here is a snippet from the piece,

 

The cost of attending college continues to climb: in-state tuition and fees at public four-year schools averaged $6,185 this year, up 6.6% from last year, says the College Board, which tracks more than 5,000 colleges and universities. The increase was slightly more than the previous year’s 5.7% bump.

At private schools, tuition and fees this year average $16,640, up 5.5% from last year. Increases the previous year averaged 6.3%.

 

Price increases have been smallest at public two-year institutions, where tuition and fees averaged $2,361, up 4.2% from last year, vs. 3.8% the year before.