Campus Entrepreneurship

A lot of people become entrepreneurs because it is easier than ‘managing’/working with others. The most extreme examples are so called solo-entrepreneurs — those who work by themselves. My research finds that many campus entrepreneurs start out as solo-entrepreneurs. Information Week writer Alice LePlante has a great piece on solo entrepreneurs — profiling a few. From the article,

Call them lifestyle businesses. Peopleless enterprises. Solo entrepreneurs. Workers like Bradbury are becoming increasingly common as the Internet matures, software as a service (SaaS) is more reliable, outsourcing becomes more commonplace, and customers and user communities begin to shoulder more of the work of keeping operations going. Such companies get big results by thinking small — from an organizational perspective, that is. From a revenue perspective, they’re quite ambitious.

“We’re seeing them everywhere — they almost don’t feel like businesses, because there’s no there there — these are people working from anywhere and in any time zone, and who are grossing from $250,000 up to $5 million or $6 million,” said Paul Kedrosky, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, who has written extensively about peopleless businesses. “Generally, these are people for whom the interesting part is the delivery of the product or service, not the management of other people,” he said.

I read this post, ‘Banking off the Election: Entrepreneurs Get Creative,’ over at the WSJ’s Independent Street Blog. Its about companies producing ‘election’ specific products to try to grow. While the post focuses on high tech offerings, campus entrepreneurs have made T-Shirts, thrown parties, and formed firms in order to exploit events — from homecoming football games to traditional holidays like Valentine’s Day — for years.

There is no doubt many campus entrepreneurs are making money on the nominating process and will go after even more during the election. College students are politically passionate and they have pockets full of money and plastic. Are any of you out there taking runs at the election to make money for your campus ventures?

I found the pitch for MyFilmU.com over at Vator.tv. It is pretty interesting. It appears the company takes scripts/pitches from students at various schools. Then picks some to produce. Here is a sample of an upcoming show at Montana State University — Textbook. From their about us page.

Founded in May 2006, MyFilmU.com is an online broadcast network for college students by college students. MyFilmU will provide the next generation of filmmakers with the incentives, resources, and platform necessary to generate on-campus series’ within a large cross-section of colleges and universities, creating a rich set of programming by some of the world’s best young creative talent.

Its not just the hoopsters from Chapel Hill that are finding continued success. SizeMeUp.com and its CEO/Founder Melissa Adelman is on a roll. Here is an NPR interview with Melissa and here is SizeMeUp.com on KillerStartups.com.

They are leading the creation of the ‘comparative sizing’ market — a product/tool that is basically a ’size converter’ — like a currency converter. This would solve the problem of different sizes from different brands meaning different things. If it works, they will reap XL returns.

11:42 AM (MERC) Sameeksha Desai is presenting on a Theory of Destructive Entrepreneurship. This is an investigation into the ‘entrepreneurial growth policies’ that are often put into place in 3rd world and conflict torn countries — trying to formalize their economies. So what role does entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship policies play in post-conflict societies.

Really a nice change of pace, and an interesting topic that not many in the entrepreneurship space pay much attention to — how can entrepreneurship be a bad thing for society?

Really interesting talk on user innovations in the medical devices industry by Aaron K. Chatterji of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke . He is a great presenter and has an interesting topic to speak on. User innovation is huge (from sports equipment and software to medical devices and clothing) user innovation is huge and only getting bigger.

11:08 AM - Listening to Yang Ling (GMU School of Management) talk about research into the personal values of CEOs and firm performance. This is a really interesting line of inquiry b/c most research on entrepreneurs look at their personalities. As Ling explained, personal values are different from personalities. However, it appears that the variables they used as ‘collectivism’ and novelty as personal values. Not sure how that I fully understand why they chose these values, but I am happy that they started this line of research. Looks like they studied small and medium sized firms — not sure this is entrepreneurship — a typical problem going that brings us back to the root of the problem with entrepreneurship research — who/which firms are entrepreneurs/entrepreneurial.

10:20 AM (Mason Entrepreneurship Research Conference)…. I am listening to a prof (don’t know if it is Mary Pat or Ellen) from CSU LA. She is presenting on new media firms in LA. What is new media? Do we even know? She claims this area is a hotbed of activity, but there is little research. (this is always a challenge for researchers as new industries, models, technologies grow)

She is presenting a paper on how new media affects product development in the entertainment industry. Just found it is Mary Pat as she just referred to Ellen as the expert in meta-contextual analysis. (I don’t know what it is).

She is explaining how social networking occurs within this context of new medea/entertainment; now she is looking at how ‘knowledge about technology and markets’ playes a role; now absorbtive capacity; now innovation and performace.

She and her colleagues are trying to determine how new media is used by production firms in the entertainment industry. The major problem I have is that in the entertainment space is being invaded by tons of firms that are not ‘entertainment’ firms.

There are a lot of questions in this session as the topic is huge and it is a moving topic that lacks definitions.

A few years ago when I wrote my first paper on bplan contests, most folks thought I was nuts. But I knew something was going on. I was aware that contests and prizes were growing. I observed that groups outside of the business school and the university were holding contests. I began to see stories of policy makers putting the contest into place.

According to a story at Rapid Growth (out of Grand Rapids I believe), the State of Michigan is putting up $30 million for winners of business plan competitions. Now that is a lot of cheddar. I am trying to find verification on this story from the state or other sources and will post an update later. From the story by Deborah Johnson Wood:

Some $30 million is soon to be up for grabs in the second statewide business plan competition sponsored by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. The funds will be awarded as grants and loans for winners of the competition.

The contest seeks to spur commercial development and job growth in four competitive-edge technology sectors: life sciences, advanced automotive manufacturing, alternative energy, and homeland security and defense.

I am attending the 4th Annual Mason Entrepreneurship Research Conference (MERC) tomorrow in Fairfax, VA. The conference gets better each year (I presented year 2 on business plan competitions) and I am excited to hear Sankaran Venkataraman (keynote), Sameeksha Desai & Zoltan Acs (on ‘destructive entrepreneurship’), Scott Jackson (on Mass Healthcare Law on Entre), and Jim Wolfe (on teaching entrepreneurship). Here is the full agenda. If they have wifi there, I will try to blog some of the ‘action.’