PROVIDENCE -- 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.
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.
