“A business only works if you do it,” he says. “A good idea doesn’t make you money,”
Yet even though the other student businesses have managed to collect gains—Redline, for instance, turned a profit of about $6,500 in the fall—many of the entrepreneurs cite experience as their primary goal.
“The money is really not the reason,” says Kopko with a chuckle. “The typical average for a business is three years to be profitable.
“There are other ways we could make much more [money],” he adds, “like tutoring for SATs.”
For Kopko, as for many other of the young entrepreneurs, starting a business can help put their classroom economics into practice.
“[Entrepreneurship] gives you chance to apply the economics you learn, make some mistakes,” he says, “and go back and see if something in your education was wrong or give it the second college try.”
Many of the student entrepreneurs cite low over-head costs as being a key ingredient to their financial survival. Both Redline’s and H-Ads’ successes hinge on their being less expensive options. “We’re able to charge significantly less than the Coop,” explains Redline Sales Manager Brooks E. Washington ’06. The Coop charges large mark-ups from publisher prices, since it has “essentially a monopoly on this market,” he says.
During the spring semester, the Redline group made their guaranteed next-day delivery free of charge, something online retailers ordinarily do not do. Michael W. Reckhow ’06, Redline’s technology manager, says that this helped Redline provide a “completely unique product.”
A similar strategy gave Tanjeloff’s enterprise its financial edge. The business, which is now merging with The Crimson, sustains itself by selling commercial ads alongside free student ads. “We offered a cheaper alternative to advertising [than other campus publications],” he says. “Our only overhead cost was printing and distributions.”
Captain says that Ezaria was able to start up with only 4,000 dollars of investment capital by coming up with creative ways to reduce [their] costs,” such as shooting high-quality product pictures themselves.
WORKING THE SYSTEM
For student entrepreneurs, running a business from within the College gates can mean brushing up against administrative boundaries.
The College’s Handbook for Students stipulates that “Harvard permits undergraduates to undertake modest levels of business activities on campus, subject to approval by the Harvard College Business Advisory Committee.” The implications of this regulation has threatened to trip up a few of the young start-ups.
On a request from the College administration, both Ezaria and Redline had to shift their postal operations off campus in order to alleviate the workload of the Harvard Mail Services. Their leaders say that applying for campus approval was otherwise relatively straightforward.
“Dean Kidd was actually really helpful in making things run smoothly, directing me to people in the University who might be helpful,” Yagan says.
But not all businesses find the waters of Harvard’s bureaucracy so smooth. According to David A. Eisenberg ’07, DormAid’s chief operating officer, the company encountered “resistance from the administration.” Beginning in early April of last year, the company’s executives entered into nine months of meetings with the Deans, all of the house superintendents, each of the house masters, and several other administrators.
While the freshman dorms and most of the houses eventually allowed DormAid to operate under a strict “one-strike” policy, Mather and Lowell have refused them the privilege. The service will ultimately be up and running on campus next year and, according to Kopko, its mere existence reflects the value of resilience for any start-up enterprise.
“Don’t take ‘No’s’ too easily,” says Kopko. “People who don’t quit, typically win.”
—Staff writer Nina L. Vizcarrondo can be reached at nvizcarr@fas.harvard.edu.