 "Photo: Alex Walker")
Are you interested in entrepreneurship, but unsure how to get into it? If so, College Mogul is exactly what you're looking for. Recently founded by three college students - Alex Lindahl, CSOM '08, Miles Lennon, Columbia '08, Henry Khachatryan, CSOM '08 - the blog focuses on all aspects of college entrepreneurship, featuring profiles on various startups, upcoming contests and fairs, and various networking resources. Inspired by the Web site Tech Crunch, which is now approaching one million readers, Lindahl and his co-workers are aiming to "be the Tech Crunch for the college demographic." They are trying to turn College Mogul into a comprehensive resource portal for Generation-Y entrepreneurs. Khachatryan controls the Web development and programming of the site, using a minimalist approach consisting of PHP, HTML, and the WordPress platform. Lindahl and Lennon produce the written content. The blog has a company index so one can click for a list of startups. Users also have the ability to rate companies, see who the founders are, and read descriptions of their businesses.
Lindahl first had the idea and approached Lennon. After successfully placing in last year's Boston College Venture Competition (BCVC) with their company Text Works, they thought College Mogul would be an interesting candidate for this year's competition. So far, they have made it to the semifinals.
"I just kept hearing of all these students starting up businesses," Lindahl said. "And then I went and looked on the Web and couldn't find any blogs or news sources that specifically cover them or profile them, their company, and what they're doing."
After researching, Lindahl discovered that each year, for the top 50 universities for entrepreneurship, there are over 10,000 businesses started from undergrads, recent graduates, and graduate students combined.
The team decided to jump into their projects a couple of months ago, but have only been introducing it to the public for about a month. College Mogul features about four to five new posts per day, usually one or two each from Lindahl and Lennon. They have recruited some contributors who make a couple of posts a week and are still interested in bringing other writers on board.
Financially, they have only spent a small amount on advertising - in addition to hosting. This low-cost strategy is different than Lindahl's and Lennon's approach to Text Works, in which Lindahl admitted they made some mistakes and wasted money.
As far as the BCVC goes, they are also planning to present their blog in a nontraditional manner. This is because a blog is particularly hard to pitch to venture capitalists. Despite their success, Lindahl and his Text Works team ran out of time during their presentation last year.
After spending the last year working on Text Works, however, Lindahl feels more confident and experienced. If they win the competition or subsequently receive attention from venture capitalists, they plan to keep going with College Mogul. Right now, they are not focused on making money off it, but building and increasing its traffic. Over the past couple of weeks, it has gotten 2,000 unique visits.
"It's catching on a lot right now," Lindahl said. "This is actually really good, it's causing us to network a lot with entrepreneurs from California and all over the United States. The traffic that we build on this side, after we build up that audience, we can transfer it to our other sites - so we're leveraging our efforts in different ways."
Overall, College Mogul has received positive feedback. It was recently posted on the Web site Alltop, which is run by Guy Kawasaki, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former Apple employee, which Lindahl cited as a "turning point" for his blog. n
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