Entrepreneurs juggle school with business

With fewer jobs available for graduating seniors, some students are looking to create their own.

“I think that it’s the best time to start [a company],” said Carter Cleveland ’09. Cleveland said he plans to move to Silicon Valley after graduation to work on his startup online service, exhibytes.com, a virtual art gallery that allows artists to buy, share and sell their work on social networking websites.

“If you look back, a lot of the greatest companies out there came out of [a] recession,” Cleveland said, noting that both Microsoft and Apple were founded during the economic downturn in the 1970s. “You’re going to have less competition. You’re forging your company in the hottest part of the fire.”

Cleveland, who applied for two jobs, decided to strike out on his own when he did not receive an offer from either.

“It was sort of half-hearted anyway,” he explained. “I think this is a lot more fun than taking an actual job. You’re really creating jobs in America. It’s the best time to take on these risks.”

Though Exhibytes is not making profits yet, Cleveland said, “We’re very lucky to live in America, where you’re not going to starve, especially coming from Princeton with a Princeton network.”

The Princeton alumni network offers a significant advantage to students who are developing their own businesses, even in comparison to peer institutions, Cleveland said.

“I was talking with a venture capitalist who went to Harvard, and he just loves working with Princeton entrepreneurs,” he explained. “He said, ‘You just don’t have that kind of network coming from Harvard.’ ”

Josh Weinstein ’09 is counting on a different type of network to boost his new business.

“I think the romance industry may even be doing better in light of the recession,” Weinstein said in an e-mail, referencing the social networking culture that includes internet dating sites. Weinstein will be expanding his internet matchmaking service, goodcrush.com, next year.

Like Weinstein, entrepreneurs throughout the Princeton community — on and off campus — are finding that the economic downturn is affecting their startups in unexpectedly positive ways.

Mick Hagen entered Princeton as a member of the Class of 2009 but left after his freshman year to build zinch.com, a website that connects students to colleges they want to apply to.

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“I’m an entrepreneur,” Hagen said. “I’m willing to take risks. I just felt that this was a good enough opportunity, an exciting enough idea.”

Hagen said Zinch attempts to remedy the inefficiencies inherent in college admissions. More than 700,000 students across America currently subscribe to Zinch.

Joe Perla, who also came to the University as a member of the Class of 2009 and left after his sophomore year to pursue entrepreneurial projects of his own, said stakeholders are more cautious with their investments because of the economic climate.

“They don’t want to invest in risky little companies that aren’t going to be very big,” Perla explained. “They want to invest in something that’s going to change the world.”

Perla said his company, labmeeting.com, “is going to change the way people do science.”

Before leaving Princeton, Perla said he worked in a neuroscience lab and was inspired to start Labmeeting by the inefficiencies he saw in the lab’s operations. He added that he was motivated in particular by the fact that the lab was not “using the technologies online that exist to collaborate and work together.”

Perla, who also founded the Entrepreneurship Club on campus, said he remembers thinking, “I need to focus on this before I even do this research.”

Labmeeting is a site where biomedical scientists can collaborate. “We’re going to help change publishing, change funding and help change collaboration among scientists online,” he explained. “We are becoming the place for science online.”

Starting a business can be an emotional enterprise, Cleveland said. “You have moments of excitement, moments of panic and doubt,” he explained. “Since starting a company, it’s really been a rollercoaster ride ... Once you’re tied to this thing, it’s just nuts.”