As a recent college graduate, it is uplifting to learn about new entrepreneurs, and even meet some that are also recent college graduates. It has become increasingly difficult to land the job you’ve always wanted after the educational swinging-door we call college; and many people have turned to starting their own businesses and launching ideas right at the get-go! Remember that idea you had at 3am about that great invention that would change the world? Young people of today are going for it, fire at their feet, and trying to make something happen, risks and all!
I was lucky enough to have met some of these people; young entrepreneurs! These recent college grads started a website called, “CollegeOnly.com,” and their feedback increases daily! I had been walking in New Haven, CT, the home to Yale University, when approached by some members of the Marketing team. I was handed a door-hanging flyer that said simply, “You’ve been SEXILED!” with information about the website on the back– what a brilliant gimmick to catch the attention of college students! I was instantly drawn to these young ambitious recent-grads, and asked them to meet with me for an interview, which they accepted. The walked away and I could still hear them approach strangers with, “Heard of CollegeOnly.com? Take this door-knocker!” the sounds of a great marketing approach.
What is CollegeOnly.com? Well, I interviewed a Shahed Serajuddin, the Co-Founder “COO” who does Marketing and Communications Management for the website. He proclaims the site to be a “College Community,” one that limits membership to those in said institutions that have become a part of the website already; no teachers or other outsiders, just STUDENTS.
I proceeded to ask whether the site is like the way “Facebook” used to be, and he responded with, “Not exactly, Facebook no longer caters to the college community; it’s no longer an honest discourse with the campus—Plus, there are unique feature sets!”
Shahed’s favorite feature were the “Chat Rooms,” where you can enter your courses, residence halls, and clubs and have an open discourse with your peers. You can browse people here too, and find that one person you wanted to know more about or talk to in length about a political subject or the upcoming final. Mr. Serajuddin was unable to unveil some more top-secret features that he was even more excited about.
The makers of CollegeOnly.com have high-hopes for the next five years and are currently in the process of tweaking the site for “Critical Mass.” When it was first launched, there was a lot of buzz, but it had some bugs, and they are still tweaking the site for the schools with access to the site. Some schools include Yale, Cornell, Penn, and Princeton. These boys were even lucky enough to have news coverage from the New York Times about their new site.
Josh Weinstein had founded the site while still in college at Princeton; he had ideas to create a college-exclusive online
community that allowed his peers to converse and socialize without having to worry about their teacher or the general public having access to their party lives or discussions. He began by creating online dating sites like GoodCrush and RandomDorm. He co-founded CollegeGovs, which was a listserv for student body presidents that allowed one to connect through online “dating” and matchmaking—with this he began thinking bigger and better. This site became a huge hit, so he decided to expand his ideas past romantic endeavors, to general college life and social connectedness.
Josh graduated from Princeton in 2009, with a degree in Asian Studies, when he decided to proceed with his ideas and expand on collegeonly.com. He lives in New York City, constantly networking and programming to help iron out the kinks on his site.
These men held events here at Yale University to discuss the site and to find out what their public wanted with the site; to find out what was in highest demand. They held a “study break” after my interview where they handed out sandwiches and doorknockers and other marketing accouterments. Josh and Shahed along with their friends, are living the dream many recent grads struggle with. They took their ideas and ran with them, and are creating a fantastic social media site that has been in demand since Facebook took away their exclusivity to colleges. This idea can bridge relationships between college peers tenfold, and that’s what their goal is.
Even after their business meeting, they won the hearts of the Yalies by trowing a “CollegeOnly.com party” at Toad’s Place, which is a local bar here at New Haven, where they gave out CollegeOnly sunglasses and took pictures of the students having a great time. They went above and beyond the professional relationship and showed the students they were just like them, and wanted to have fun. Not only did they get into the students minds, but they partied like it was 1980 with them too!
I find it intriguing to see such young adults with so much ambition as to build an idea from the ground up, self-market and create an entire business network to make their ideas a reality. I believe that if we all went with our gut about our ideas and have enough ambition to complete the task and make it happen, we can all have our own businesses or work to create an interesting job that you love to have, and love to live with, then this generation would be a much less un-employed and have a better shot at having a much less stressful existence in these tough economic times. I’d take this story to heart, to know that yes, you CAN start your own company.
You can check out CollegeOnly.com HERE.
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