Editor's Note: With today's story on the boom in entrepreneurship on college campuses, Bloomberg Businessweek begins an occasional series on the world of startups. The series will focus on MBAs and undergraduate business students who developed their ideas or launched their businesses while still in school, and the many ways their schools helped them get their new ventures off the ground. For a look at some business students trying to build their own businesses, check out our slide show.
New York University seniors Katie Shea and Susie Levitt were interning at Goldman Sachs Group (GS) and Citigroup-Smith Barney (C) when their sore feet inspired them to start a $10,000 dorm-room company selling foldable flat shoes that come in their own tote bag.
A year later they have imported 70,000 pairs from China that retail for between $10 and $25. Women can don the slipper-like footwear to hike or drive to the office in comfort, then switch back to their high heels when they arrive at work.
Inspired by Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook as a sophomore at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., and stymied by the shortage of jobs in the recession, college students are launching businesses before they graduate. They're entering industries that previously required large investments, thanks to websites that offer help with manufacturing, inventory management, and accounting, says Dane Stangler, a project manager with the Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City (Mo.) nonprofit organization that promotes entrepreneurship.
The trend isn't limited to undergraduates. Even MBAs are catching the entrepreneurial bug. Top MBA programs are reporting a surge in interest among students in launching their own businesses, and many schools are ramping up support for budding entrepreneurs.On Friday, Harvard Business School (Harvard Full-Time MBA Profile) announced the opening of its first innovation and entrepreneurship lab in 2011.
"If you start a company tomorrow, you can be global your first day," Stangler says. "You can have international suppliers, you can have international customers. Just compared with a decade ago, it's unbelievable how fast barriers to entry have fallen to starting a business from your dorm room."
The financial crisis has contributed to growing interest in entrepreneurship on college campuses. At USC's Marshall School of Business (Marshall Undergraduate Business Profile), the number of undergraduates enrolled in business-creation classes has increased 30 percent since 2007, to 1,042 this year, says Gene Miller, director of the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC.
Post a comment about this story in Reader Discussion…
Track and share business topics across the Web.
RSS Feed: Most Read Stories
RSS Feed: Most E-mailed Stories
RSS Feed: Most Discussed Stories
Buy a link now!
About Advertising EDGE Programs Reprints Terms of Use Disclaimer Privacy Notice Ethics Code Contact Us Site Map
©2010 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.
Read Full Article »