Campus Entrepreneurship

While I don’t think I would go for an 80 year old partner, entrepreneurship is for people of all ages. Over at DailySlop, they’re talking about what age an entrepreneur should or should not be.

BTW, it is worth thinking about… as a campus entrepreneur, can you find an older partner/investor/advisor and what benefits might that bring (could be $$$, experience, etc.) There are a lot of baby boomers out there with 401ks, homes, and inheritance’s from the ‘greatest generation.’ Maybe campus entrepreneurs should be tapping that!

Yesterday I spent some time with Dana Lande and members of her team at their office. Dana is an entrepreneur who launched her venture at the University of Maryland Smith School of Business (btw, her logistics intern and lead financial person are from UMD).

Her business (Dayna Designs and DaynaU) is based out of her basement — a pretty spacious, organized, and bright place. Upstairs were her twin daughters, their nanny, and her dogs. Her sister was visiting and using one of the companies workstations. The place had a great vibe to it, and while it is in a residential neighborhood, I’d prefer its space, look, and feel to any ‘office’ in a building that I have worked in.

BTW, the NY Times has a nice piece on home based businesses by Marci Alboher. Including a mention of an online feature that is trying to rank the top 100 home based businesses. Wonder if any dorm based businesses will make the list.

Okay, so this is a total pr piece, but these are some fascinating businesses (both Vator.tv and Crushpad).

Here is the video for crushpad and here is from the press release,

Crushpad, the urban winery that is democratizing wine making, today announced that it has been selected the winner of the 2007 Wine 2.0 Business Plan Competition hosted by the entrepreneur network, Vator.tv. Wine 2.0 is based on Web 2.0 concepts pioneered by companies such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wine 2.0 connects consumers to each other to create a huge force that has the opportunity to transform the notoriously producer-centric wine industry into a consumer-driven industry.

Found this via DailySlop.com — “The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine has named the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business as the nation’s top graduate program for 2007.” A link to the article in school’s newspaper.