Imagine turning your dorm room hobby into a full-fledged business and then being recognized for it by a national magazine. That is exactly what happened to the team at CampusLIVE.com when they were chosen this summer by "BusinessWeek" magazine as one of America's Top 25 best young entrepreneurs.
Jared Stenquist, who started CampusLIVE.com with his friend Jeff Cassidy from his dorm room in John Adams during sophomore year at UMass, said that the call came as a complete surprise.
"I thought it was a friend playing a joke on me," Stenquist said, explaining that he had no idea he had even been nominated to be in the running at the magazine.
According to the article in "BusinessWeek," readers of the magazine were asked to send in nominations for men and women under the age of 25 who were running their own companies and showed growing potential. They were also asked to evaluate the talent of the founders of these companies. Once all entries were received, "BusinessWeek" had three experts sift through all the nominees and pick the 25 most impressive.
Stenquist - who has come a long way from playing around with Web sites in his dorm room and advertising his site in the Southwest parking lot - now boasts an office in downtown Amherst, a full-time team working with him on the Web site and a CampusLIVE Web site at 27 campuses nationwide.
CampusLIVE.com, which started out as an idea to make links for places on campus and around the area easier to find by placing them all on one page, has evolved into a highly interactive Web site on which companies can actually log in and post information on their products as well as let students know about any coupons or special deals.
"It's like Facebook for business owners" said Brian Strunk, who is in charge of the sales side of CampusLIVE. "We are the middle men."
While it is Strunk's job to reel in the business, it is Sasha Grosman's job to make sure that the information is actually reaching the students. As director of marketing for the site, Grosman needs to constantly think up new ways to market CampusLIVE.
He also makes sure that he establishes and maintains relationships with students at other campuses that have a CampusLIVE Web site. Strunk points out, that being recently removed from college, they can't simply hop on a plane and fly across the country to make sure the information on the Web site is still relevant to the campus, so having teams at other campuses is imperative to the success of the site.
But it's not all work and no play, as Grosman also gets to think of cool and fun ways to get the word out about CampusLIVE.
This coming Saturday, CampusLIVE is hosting a beruit tournament at the local pub The Harp.
"We are graduates of UMass after all," Strunk said.
The tournament, which starts at 2 p.m., costs $20 per team and half the money goes to a local charity while the other half goes to the winning team.
It's important not to lose sight that this is for the students," Stenquist said.
Stenquist, Cassidy, Grosman, Strunk and Boris Revsin, COO and one of the original members of the CampusLIVE team, continue working hard towards the goal that, some day, every campus in the nation will have a CampusLIVE website. That day may not be too far off though as the "BusinessWeek" article resulted in a huge amount of interest from campuses across the country who want CampusLIVE at their schools.
Lisa DiMatteo can be reached at ldimatte@student.umass.edu
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