Lessons Learned From a Failed Ivy League Entrepreneur

A "Case Story" By Chris Cononico
 

Chapter Twenty-Two

“We all have the ability. The difference is how we use it.“ –- German Proverb

With a mix of excitement and apprehension, the three of us rejected our job offers in corporate America.  We were officially full-time "entrepreneurs." We also hired another employee to replace us as manager of the QuakerCard. If we were serious about expanding our business, we felt it was important to remove ourselves from the daily operations on Penn’s campus. After all, if we were going to run campus programs at multiple universities, we couldn’t personally manage every one by ourselves.

Although we were excited about expanding to other schools, we harbored some ill will with the Business Services people at Penn. As a result, we continued to market our program aggressively on Penn’s campus. In our view, Penn was the 500-lb. gorilla and we were the underdog fighting for survival. That meant using every marketing nuance to our advantage, including the names QuakerCard and University Student Services, and our on-campus location. In our second mailing campaign during the summer of 1997, excerpts from the cover letter follow:

“Dear Penn Student and Parents,

We’ve been working hard to make QuakerCard an even better service for you this year! The QuakerCard is a meal plan and necessity account created specifically for students at the University of Pennsylvania … In its most basic form, the program offers a better quality and more flexible dining plan for students, so they can eat their meals at local restaurants near campus.

In an attempt to provide for the safety of our students, the QuakerCard can also be used to pay for Yellow Cab taxis, so that students never have to worry about walking home alone, late at night.”

On the back of the letter, we had a map of Penn’s campus, showing where each of our merchants was located. It literally covered the entire map. We labeled the map, “Home of the QuakerCard.” Beneath it was a list of each restaurant, its description, and any discounts that it offered on the card.

If Penn’s Business Services were mad at us the prior year, they were going to be furious with us now, because we marketed QuakerCard as if it was more important as the school-offered services. We even referred to cardholders as being “our students.” The only distinction we made between QuakerCard and the school was a disclaimer on the bottom that read “Affiliated with students, not the University.” At that point, we didn’t care about playing nice. The Business Services people had become the enemy.

In our new marketing campaign, we touted the card’s new features. The QuakerCard had also become a discount card, offering up to 20% savings at restaurants and other places around campus. We even came up with automated deposit authorization, where funds could be deposited from a parent’s credit card or checking account periodically into the student’s QuakerCard account.

In our second year of operations, QuakerCard had higher deposits than the prior year (over $2 million in aggregate spending on the program), and we successfully captured over 70% of the entire freshmen class as card-carrying members. Despite our more aggressive marketing stance, we received no further push back from the school and we were more popular than ever with the student body. Unfortunately, success reinforced our “we’ll show them” attitude. It appeared we were winning the war at Penn and the end seemed to justify the means.
 

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.