College students are taking the entrepreneurial plunge

05/02/2002

Nick Fitzhugh’s bedroom has a secret life — as a boardroom.

Fitzhugh, a senior at Brown University, is running a nonprofit company — The Glimpse Foundation
— from his off-campus apartment. Fitzhugh, 23, and his staff of seven raise money and organize
the business from his bedroom.

BY ANDREA L. STAPE
Projo.com Journal Staff Writer

The company produces a magazine three times year, and updates a Web site regularly, which
focuses on the issues facing students studying abroad and covers international events.

"We’ve gone through periods where we worked half our waking hours on this," said Fitzhugh,
who launched the company in 2000, as a junior. "For half of us this is our dream, it’s the only thing
we want to do after graduation."

They aren’t alone. College students across the state are eagerly taking the entrepreneurial plunge.

Undeterred by the dot-com implosion that claimed the lives of many dorm-room start-ups over the
past two years, students refuse to let the volatile economy and skittish venture capitalists get in
the way of doing business. And it has caused a groundswell of interest in collegiate
entrepreneurs.

Driven by student demand, two Bryant College graduates launched the Global Entrepreneurship
Program at the school in November. Fueled by an almost $80,000 budget from the college, the
group held its first official business-plan competition in March. About 14 student-run companies
applied to compete for the $1,000 prize.

The GEP also sponsored the Brown University-Bryant College Business Plan Bootcamp in March.
More than 70 students from both schools attended the seminar — which will be held annually,
according to Troy Byrd, manager and cofounder of the GEP.

Last month, the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization held its first East Coast conference, in
Worcester, Mass. About 100 students showed up at the Saturday event, which was sponsored
by CEO, a national organization geared to supporting college entrepreneurs, and the Global
Entrepreneurship Program at Bryant and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The event focused on
helping students overcome start-up hurdles, such as ironing out business plans and finding
financing.

The conference also included the New England Collegiate Entrepreneur Awards. Although two
Rhode Islanders — Margaux Morisseau from Rhode Island College and Jason Colgan from Bryant
— were nominated, they lost to a student entrepreneur from Babson College, in Wellesley, Mass.

For an event that was planned on short notice, the turnout was impressive, said Gina Betti,
associate director of the Collaborative for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at WPI. About 20
Bryant and 2 RIC students attended. Betti said she is expecting 500 to 700 students to show up
next year.

"I think the dot-com industry let young people know they could open a business, we saw that it
was possible for young people to start a company," said Morisseau, a 25-year-old senior at RIC
and owner of The Greenery, a year-old flower and gift shop in Scituate.

"I don’t think the students my age really see the economy as a permanent problem," said
Morisseau.

Tomorrow, the Brown University Entrepreneurship Program will hold its fourth annual
business-plan competition. Five student businesses will vie for $50,000 in prizes.

While there were fewer applications this year than there were for the first contest in 1999 — at
the height of the dot-com boom — three of this year’s finalists are actually generating revenue,
said Alex Kruglov, a Brown student and codirector of the Brown Entrepreneurship Program.

"The quality has increased tremendously, people aren’t just making business plans out of thin air,"
said Kruglov. "There’s a higher degree of realism in the plans then ever before."

This fall, Johnson & Wales University plans to open a new entrepreneurial center in Providence.
Already, at the school’s pilot office for the Larry Friedman International Center for
Entrepreneurship, about 18 student-run businesses are in the planning or start-up phase,
according to Ken Proudfoot, dirctor of the center.

Across the nation, interest from young people in launching companies is at an all-time high,
according to Erik Pages, policy director with the National Commission on Entrepreneurship, a
Washington, D.C.-based public-policy group.

It’s a movement that has been building for the past decade, said Pages. In the late 1980s, only a
handful of business schools had entrepreneurship programs, but now 550 schools have
entrepreneurship classes, he said.

It was also fueled by the dot-com bubble and bust — which did kill a number of student-run
businesses but still raised awareness of entrepreneurship as a viable career option.

"People are more knowledgeable about what is possible," said Barrett Hazeltine, an engineering
professor at Brown and an adviser to the entrepreneurship program. "The social construct of
everyone having a lifetime job," no longer exists, he said.

Now, the recent economic downturn appears to be helping to keep the entrepreneurial fires
burning.

"I think it’s been fueled by the prospect that they might not find an internship or employment when
they graduate due to the unstableness of the economy right now," said Betti, with the
entrepreneurship center at WPI.

But for many student entrepreneurs, the economy or the lack of job opportunities has nothing to
do with why they launch their own businesses. For them, it’s about fulfilling a dream.

"A lot of artistic entrepreneurs wouldn’t let the market affect their art," said Eli Batalion, a Brown
student and the 21-year-old cofounder of FDLT Productions, a production company in the finals of
the Brown business-plan competition.

Jerome Saibil, his 22-year-old partner, agrees.

"What makes an entrepreneur is someone who isn’t comfortable taking a job at a regular
company." he said.

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