Entrepreneurial Nuggets | Adirondack Jack | Wave Extinguisher at Ripley’s | Cheap Lego Drones | Warby Parker Makes Public School Hip

Alibaba founder Jack Ma bought 28,000 acres of forestland in the Adirondacks for conservation purposes… While billionaire founders and CEOs conserving land in NY is not new, the fact that a Chinese innovators is there too is interesting. Read the story about Jack and his $23 million dollar buy.

Warby Parker, the hip, social impact oriented eye glass firm founded by Wharton

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Cartoon of the day 6/26/15.

students has partnered with New York City Public Schools and will provide up to 20,000 pairs of glasses to kids in need.

GMU’s Seth Robertson and Viet Tran were feature in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Cartoon of the Day for their Wave Extinguisher — it puts out fire with sound waves!

We love Parrot drones at Mason — they are fun for students to learn on. The company announced 13 new drones this week for less than $189! One with a Lego attachment!

Commonbond, an innovative student loan company started at Wharton in 2012, sold its first bonds to Wall Street investors. By targeting specific students and graduates (originally Wharton grads), the firm offers lower rates to lender and loan products with specific attributes to investors.

Kindle to Bring Creative Destruction to Textbook/Library Market?

We have seen many campus entrepreneurs enter the textbook market; it is a huge cost for students and bringing relief has driven many new companies. Amazon, while not a pure play in the textbook market, has brought great benefits to the market.

With the release of the Kindle 2 it becomes clear that this type of device may go to the crux of the textbook issue: new editions. The publication (and printing) of new editions of textbooks has driven costs up for students and made large profits for publishers, profs, and schools; by moving to a Kindle-like device, new editions would no longer have huge costs from print/shipping etc. So just as applications, software, and itunes update digitally, so would text books. It would of course kill the used market for books, having widespread consequences.

Moreover, instead of just buying the e-version (or Kindle version) of the book, students could rent it (or perhaps subscribe like Rhapsody) and have access during the semester or term that they need the book. Next up would be entire collections — obviously Google is dabbling in this space as is Apple through its Apps, but no ‘serious’ product has emerged to target the textbook market.

Last week, unable to get to the library in order to pick up “Lobbying for Higher Education” by Contance Cook, I read the e-book via the GMU Library website. I logged in about 12 times and read the entire book. With a Kindle and a e-library membership, perhaps I could have downloaded it for a few weeks and read it comfortable wherever I was, no need for. After two weeks the file might lock or ‘disintegrate’, forcing me to ‘renew’ it.

While it was pretty easy to read the e-book, I had to be online in order to read it. There was no download feature. This is far more limiting than a downloaded book on a personal device (be it Kindle or other device).

For campus entrepreneurs and others interested in campus economics, the question is: will the acquisition of ‘premium’ knowledge via the written word — by the purchase of and rental of physical textbooks —  to go the way of music? Will this fundamentally alter the economics of college expenses?

Once more into the breach campus entrepreneurs.

CollegeTonight.com — Emory U

I received an email last week from a PR firm representing CollegeTonight.com. I don’t know the site, but it was started by two Emory students. From the email:

What does it take to start a business while in college? While many students are juggling social lives, parties, papers and exams (and not always in the right order), the founders of CollegeTonight.com have investors, business plans and vast marketing agendas keeping them up at night. Meet Zach Suchin and Jason Schutzbank. While still students at Emory University (Jason is a currently Junior and only 21), these two friends launched a social network that caught on fast and quickly became the must click site for what to do on campus (and off). After another two years of development, CollegeTonight is now a publicly-traded company and serves as a “social sidekick” at over 110 college campuses, encouraging its members to GET ON, GET UP, GET OUT.

Hot UK Campus Entrepreneurs — Imperial College London

From Imperial College London:

The College-wide business plan competition, organised by Tanaka Business School and held on Thursday 13 March, provides both undergraduates and postgraduates with an opportunity to develop and present business ideas in a realistic environment.

The winning interdisciplinary team won the prestigious prize for their device called Tap Sprinkler, which focuses on providing quick and easy fire protection in the kitchen. It is a sprinkler system that aims to reduce the number of domestic fires that start in the home.

Yusuf Muhammad, a second year student from the Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) course, was part of the winning team. He said: “I’m in shock! We thought we had a good chance but there are so many other great ideas here, I can’t believe it! I think the key to our success is our interdisciplinary team. Between us we have a lot of great ideas.”

The other members of the winning team include Paul Thomas and Jeung Whoo-Choi, who are also studying on the IDE course and William Makant and Alan Hart, MBA students in Imperial’s Business School.