Photos by Laura J. Gardner | The Journal Gazette
From left, Bill Khorshid, Bobby Widner and Chris Lee work on business ideas at the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center.
Designing and selling T-shirts is the first step for Backdrop LLC, a business formed by the three Bishop Dwenger seniors with the help of the innovation center’s BizWiz program.
Tapping in
Are you or do you know a student who’s interested in starting a business? Steve Franks of the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center says it’s simple to get involved in the center’s BizWiz program. Contact Franks at sfranks@niic.net or 407-1754. Students must attend at least two meetings a month, one with the entire BizWiz and Student Venture Lab group and one for one-on-one coaching.
Bill Khorshid, Bobby Widner and Chris Lee, 18-year-old seniors, thought they knew what business they wanted to start.
Football players at Bishop Dwenger High School, they know college and professional programs in the region draw hordes every fall weekend. So, they came up with an idea to start a business called Fanatics Tailgaters Express, providing hospitality tents and other services for tailgating parties.
But as they went through the yearlong BizWiz program at the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center, the team began to see obstacles. The equipment needed would require a big investment; there would be innumerable regulations to contend with for serving food and drink and operating on university or municipal property; and they’d have to be at out-of-town sporting events possibly every weekend.
Through its BizWiz program and its Student Venture Lab, the Innovation Center seeks to help entrepreneurs polish their dreams into plans and then realize them.
So Lee, Widner and Khorshid moved on to Backdrop LLC, a company selling apparel and equipment related to wakeboarding, a surface water sport.
By next year, Backdrop hopes to be selling its own wakeboards, life vests and other items. Working at the Student Venture Lab, they’ve been able to get into business – designing and selling T-shirts – with a small investment and on a schedule that works for high school students.
Backdrop has big plans, and it’s already paying dividends for the partners.
“When you get that shipment (of shirts) in, you say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that just happened,’ ” Khorshid said.
Lee said the partners invested all their savings – about $2,000 – in the venture. Thus far, they’ve gotten about $1,000 out, and they plowed all that money back into the business.
The Innovation Center’s program for high school students started in May 2008. Thus far, it has resulted in six ventures, said Steve Franks, program manager.
The Innovation Center, just north of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, is funded through public and private sources. It provides state-of-the-art facilities and expert advice to businesses from the time they start until they outgrow the center.
The Innovation Center also provides conference space for businesses and organizations that want to conduct events off-site.
Thanks to grants from the Wilson Foundation, Grabill Bank and the Lincoln Foundation, students who complete the BizWiz program are eligible for awards of up to $2,500 in working capital or a 400 hour internships paying $8 an hour.
But budding entrepreneurs must refine their ideas and show commitment to their businesses before they earn a cubicle in the swanky student venture lab. Franks stressed that their businesses and ideas must be their own.
“We’re coaches, not consultants,” he said.
Franks explained that consultants get paid big bucks to tell clients exactly what to do in a given situation.
“A coach steers a person in the right direction and gets them to solve their own problems,” Franks said.
Aderian Davis, 18, has been coached into finding a niche in an industry that might seem pretty crowded – music.
“I was really driven by music,” Davis said of the time last year when he entered the BizWiz program as a senior at Elmhurst High School. “But I wanted to be different.”
So instead of starting a recording company or trying to become a DJ or a producer, Davis started UrbanUSA LLC.
It’s a Web site that creates forums to talk about big national acts, but it seeks to specialize by giving local artists a place to raise their profile. The Web site takes pains to stress that it transcends any one musical genre, with rock, hip-hop and other forms equally prominent.
The site allows local musicians to spotlight themselves and upload their music for free. Davis, now a freshman at Ivy Tech, is earning some revenue from Google ads, but he has a plan to allow artists to advertise cheaply. He won’t disclose the details until it goes live.
Davis estimated he invested about $2,000 in his business. Even though he’s working 40 to 45 hours a week on the site, it won’t generate much money until it goes live, Davis said.
“It can be really hard; you have to stay on task,” he said.
But the partners in Backdrop said the Innovation Center has been invaluable in helping them define that task.
“We didn’t know how to file for an LLC or to open up a business account at the bank,” Lee said, adding that Franks pointed the way.
He has also helped students set milestones for their businesses. He meets every week or so with the young entrepreneurs to check progress and refine goals.
Widner said there have been a few tiffs among the students partnering in the business over the past year, but even those have led to better business decisions.
“If everybody’s always in agreement, it’s worthless,” he said.
Now the three partners in Backdrop LLC plan to move their company with them to Purdue University next year and keep it growing.
“It beats flipping burgers,” Lee said.
mschladen@jg.net
|