Lessons Learned From a Failed Ivy League Entrepreneur

A "Case Story" By Chris Cononico
 

Chapter Nine

The presentation to our management class was scheduled for the last day of the semester. There were three other groups presenting that day, and my team was picked to go last. I recall being so anxious to get in front of the room that I had difficulty listening to the other speakers. I couldn’t wait to unveil our work.

When it was finally our turn to present, I think we told our story with the same enthusiasm that every entrepreneur has when he believes he stumbled upon a great idea. We walked through each major portion of our plan, the market research, the operational setup, the feedback from merchants, and the financial projections. Although our company’s estimated profitability wasn’t enough for us to go public, we expected the business to make money. When it was time for questions, a dozen hands shot up.

“How will you market to the student body?” “Why would the merchants pay you that much money?” “What about the school - how would you compete?” There were lots of great questions and we had invested a significant amount of time considering most of them already. Therefore, I think we were able to give very complete answers. The most difficult question was how we planned to mitigate the risk of competing with the school. We acknowledged the potential problem, shared our assumptions, and people seemed satisfied with our answers.

I remember standing in front of the room, fielding questions, and feeling like a statesman. I had always been a reluctant public speaker, but this time I hammed it up for the audience. I wasn’t self-conscious, because I was so excited about QuakerCard. The energy and conviction I felt about our business plan was so strong, it gave me confidence. I wanted everyone to listen to me.

That day, George, Mark, Jake and I held our heads high. We didn’t care if anyone agreed with our business idea, because we believed it. When the big hand on the clock in the back of the room struck the two, we walked towards our seats to the sound of applause.

The four of us walked out of Vance Hall that day like we were floating through the air. On our way back to Jake’s apartment, we recounted our favorite parts of the presentation for each other. “Did you see when the guy in the back row said… or how about when I said… or what about when…?”

After we got back to Jake’s apartment, the mood sobered up. I don’t think we had any idea what we were about to get ourselves into. We believed our idea could work and we wanted to prove it. Besides, since we were still college students, we didn’t think we had much to lose if we were wrong. If the company didn’t work, no one ever had to know about it, and we could still interview for jobs next year like everyone else. On the other hand, what if it became something BIG… what if?

We all chuckled at the idea of having our own company, our own offices, and a secretary. I remember not being able to stop smiling at the thought. You have to understand that all of this happened before any of the Internet craziness. At that time, it was unheard of for someone without gray hair to be running a company. Just three years prior, I didn’t know how the stock market worked, and supply/demand was a new concept for me. Now I wanted to start my own business… the whole idea was laughable, even to me.

A university campus is flooded with sales pitches from lots of companies trying to sell things to students. Tables were always set up outside the bookstore to pitch credit cards, bank accounts, magazine subscriptions, and phone services. Most of the promotional material was meant to look hip, but it came across as forced. It felt like the advertising executive was a 40 year-old man sitting in some office on Madison Avenue, who hadn’t been to a campus since he graduated 20 years ago. As current students, we believed we could do a better job of connecting with our peers. We knew what students wanted, because we knew what we wanted.

Therefore, it was no surprise to me when we went around the room and everyone agreed to start the business. There was such a feeling of enthusiasm and accomplishment among us that we wanted to keep the excitement alive. If we didn’t implement the idea, it died, and there was too much energy to allow that to happen.

Pursuing QuakerCard resembled the purchase of a call option for me. We would be parsimonious about our initial investment, get the program up and running, and see what happened. If we played our cards right, we had the luxury of seeing how the project developed before we graduated. It was like playing a hand of poker and paying to see your next card. We had little to lose and only something to gain, especially if we got dealt a pocket pair of aces.

Although we had gotten A’s for our business plan, implementing our idea was going to be complicated. The semester was ending, each of us had full-time internships for the summer, and we were going to be located in different parts of the country. Although Jake and I would be in New York, George was going to be in California, and Mark was going to be in Philadelphia. Somehow, we had to set up the business in our spare time and have it ready to launch before the last week of August, which was only three months away. It was going to be a challenge to say the least.
 
 

Copyright  2005 by Chris Cononico
All rights reserved. No part of this manuscript may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.