Many of the companies the students get into are traditional campus enterprises -- beer-keg delivery services and the like. But enough of the companies, such as Ennquez's foosball operation, are full-scale, full-time businesses, far different from the efforts of previous generations of campus entrepreneurs.
Consider, for example, Scott Mize, the 22-year-old co-founder and principal of Strawberry Software Inc., in Watertown, Mass. Through his expertise, the company has developed four new software packages in recent months -- one of which is a unique package designed to help media buyers make ad-placement decisions. Mize's work force now totals eight employees. He has gotten some interest from several of the nation's software giants in distributing the products, and if sales keep "putt-putting along" as they have been, Mize predicts the company will gross its first million by mid-1985.
At Babson College, meanwhile, 24-yearold Mulligan runs both the mobile disco and its larger counterpart, Videostar Entertainment Inc., a sound-and-video show that is billed as "Boston's first mobile video nightclub." It grosses more than $20,000 a year, he says, and -- perhaps this is the truest sign of his success -- he now has imitators.
It may seem that students who have launched profitable companies that compete in the larger marketplace would have little to gain from associating with their less-experienced cohorts in the entrepreneurship organizations, but most are quick to say that isn't true. Mulligan says he stays active in ACE, as well as Babson's Student Chamber of Commerce, for the camaraderie he finds. "As ACE's slogan goes, 'You can be independent, but you don't have to be alone.' It's really great to talk to people who have the same problems you do." It's instructive, too. "I find out more in an hour over a beer with students like these than I do in a week of classes," he declares. "Where else do you hear what bank is friendly to students who have companies? Or which printer will do your advertising the cheapest?"
"Classes are good for helping you enhance your skills," Enriquez says. "You can learn how to write a business plan, how to present yourself at a bank, or how to do your capital budgeting." But, he explains, you don't hear about ideas and opportunities in class, and, more importantly, "you don't find out what it's like to fail -- to get your butt kicked across the state of Texas like I have a few times." Through these organizations, Enriquez says, he and other students live through one another's successes and failures. And they try to learn to celebrate both. "Lose a grand here, lose a grand there -- that's the best education, I think."
Aside from the thrills generated by watching your company succeed or fail, what is it that these students expect? Money, of course, is part of the motivation, and most student entrepreneurs will admit to being blinded now and again by the dollar signs in their eyes. But for every kid driving a glossy car with a "GIMME" license plate -- like the one parked outside the ACE convention at MIT -- there are several more students who will make a convincing case that the dream of wealth is not all that propels them.
"It's not the money; it's the mechanics of making money," says Enriquez. "Show me a market, and I'll find something to do with it. Give me an idea, and I'll follow through on it."
For Anne Gullikson, past-president of Stanford University Center for Entrepreneurship, one of the largest such organizations in the nation, entrepreneurship is definitely a creative endeavor. But she rejects the notion that it can be practiced only within the confines of one's own brainchild of a company.
"Entrepreneurship is more than just what you do," she asserts. "It's how you do it. Let's face it, not all of us can start companies as soon as we get out of school. Most of us will do it eventually, but until then, I think there are other ways you can utilize your entrepreneurial bent." Unlike most of her counterparts, who are business majors, Gullikson graduated as an American Studies major. She plans to lie an "intrapreneur" to start with -- which she and others define as someone who brings entrepreneurial energy and problem-solving skills to established corporate environments.
Gullikson is also quick to point out that there is no lack of entrepreneurial expression at work in the management of these new entrepreneurship organizations. She, for example, heads an organization that caters to students of all ages and academic disciplines, and plans a convention that annually attracts up to 1,200 people. "If running this isn't a business experience, I don't know what is," she quips.
As for Enriquez, he plans to get his CPA accreditation and then possibly head back to school for his MBA. But first, he is going to work for a Big Eight accounting firm for a year or two -- for "credibility and experience," he says. Does that mean, then, that he is going corporate and giving up his entrepreneurial druthers until the right venture capitalist comes along? "No way," he says. "I was in business for two years before I even heard the word, but I know now that I ani an entrepreneur. I've always been one. And as long as I've got this garbage-can full of ideas," he says, pointing to his head, "I'll always be one."
