Dan DaranciangBeing your own boss is cool at any age, but especially so when you’re younger than 25 years old. No longer is the business world purely for adults. Some Wash. U. students have taken the plunge into the world of entrepreneurship before they are even allowed to sip alcohol legally.
“Being a student business owner is exciting,” said smiling junior Ari Vared, CEO of U-Trucking, which is best known for its storage services. “It’s unlike any other experience. I fly home to California and I talk to people next to me, and [they exclaim], ‘You own a business and you’re only 20!?'”
Running a business is quite different for students than it is for people outside of college. In fact, running a business as a student can be quite beneficial, especially here at Washington University.
At Wash. U., businesses are passed down among students, especially those in the storefronts on the South 40. Sophomore Daniel Fox, one of the five co-owners of Wydown Water, said that some of their previous owners have intense jobs on Wall Street, for example, but will still take the time to talk to the current owners if they need help.
“People are teaching and learning at the same time – it encourages the entrepreneurial spirit,” said junior Alex Schwartz, one of the three co-owners of Off The Row, a screen-printing and monogramming business.
The student businesses on the South 40 also have a valuable resource in Washington University itself. The Student Entrepreneurial Program, directed by Julie Thornton at the Office of Student Activities, of which most of the student businesses on campus are part, provides panel discussions and opportunities to network with other business owners in the St. Louis area.
The business school offers aid to students with start-up businesses, not only through the skills it teaches in finances and marketing but also through their entrepreneurship program.
The Hatchery is one class where mostly upperclassmen get to join in with St. Louis entrepreneurs’ business plans. Freshman Justin (who’d like to leave his last name unmentioned) has used the Hatchery program to put his own business idea into reality.
The summer before he came to Wash. U., Justin was sitting in the Admiral’s Club, a private airport business lounge, with his dad and wondering why this kind of workplace didn’t exist outside of the airport. He decided to make a version himself, which he plans to open in Manhattan very soon. He presented it in the Hatchery course, and three other students joined in his group. With his other entrepreneurship classes, about six of Justin’s 15 credits last semester were devoted to opening this business.
Justin has used all sorts of resources at Wash. U. to help create his business. He has involved others in his classes on his project, especially in making the financial models. He made a connection with a visual communications class in the art school, and 18 art students have been working on his logos and visuals.
“Basically I’ve been getting a lot of free labor from Wash. U.,” joked Justin.
Yet planning, owning and running a business is not an easy cash-making extracurricular project by any means – it still requires lots and lots of work. Networking is paramount. Justin still has to do interviews with potential investors, people who are going to supply his business, potential landlords and people who own locations he wants to use. He has to know his stuff; potential investors won’t take him seriously if he doesn’t know about what they do or exactly what he wants to do.
Gregg storefront owners at Wash. U. have it a bit easier than students planning for the outside world – they don’t have to start their businesses from scratch, they have several people to do the work and they don’t have the pressure to turn huge profits with the business in the future.
Nonetheless, running a business is still a challenge for them. U-Trucking has to correspond very closely with several St. Louis businesses, especially storage companies. They all have to send e-mails to potential customers and suppliers, tally inventory and balance the books. It is an everyday commitment. Junior Matt Rubin, owner of Off The Row, often has to stay up late into the night working on e-mails and projects.
It doesn’t have to be this hard for all businesses. Some students, like sophomore Pehr Hovey, have followed the business-as-a-hobby track. Hovey and his roommate, Richard Ockers, started Pehrtree Productions, a DJ business, at the beginning of this year. Hovey got professional DJ equipment free from his father’s old audio equipment business once it was liquidated. He also has a wide music collection. They do gigs at student parties about every other week (charging around $100 each) and they advertise through word of mouth. They play music and bring decorations, like rope lights.
As they incur no expenses, “basically everything we make is profit,” said Hovey. The team would like to make the business a bigger deal, but as they are both heavily involved with school and extracurricular activities, the business stays on the side.
Student business owners have another advantage: they do not need to stress constantly over balance sheets because they don’t have a lot of outside responsibility or overhead costs for the business. Most student business owners also don’t have to support a family, and oftentimes don’t really have to support themselves. Some students bought into their businesses with loans from their parents. Others used their own money, from savings or expert poker playing (like Schwartz). Justin is using some money from past ventures for his business, but most of it is being leveraged from investors.
“In the real world, time is money and we need to support ourselves,” said Justin. “That’s why students have the upper hand. Because of [relative financial freedom], we can be more liberal with what we do.I can wait for the right opportunity.”
Whether it is a hobby or a big deal, student business owners say they mostly do it because they love entrepreneurship and they love their product. Pehr said he started the DJ business because he had been to many a party where the music “sounded like crap.” Justin has owned three businesses in the past (mostly in design) – he loves the entrepreneurial process and seeing his ideas become realities, and the business lounge is something he would use. Fox says he really thinks Wydown Water makes your quality of life better.
“For an entrepreneur, it’s not the money involved,” said Justin. “It’s the dedication to the project. After so much time, it feels like your baby. You love it and you want to see it succeed.”