Starship Enterprise
As I walk down High Street to interview the Marketing and PR Manager of 'Oxford Entrepreuneurs' I start to feel just a little bit apprehensive. I've never actually met an entreprenuer before and have a quaint mental image of a white-haired old carckpot tinkering in his garden shed before yelling "Eureka" and explaining to his favourite potted geranium how this newly-inventedautomatic flyswat will revolutionise the lives of thousands of people (not to mention a good few flies) and make him a millionaire. As I turn into Magpie Lane, this mental image nags at me like an untreained wife and sullenly refuses to go away. I ring the doorbell, and when Bob Goodson answers and shows me in, I realise with no small amount of relief that he is entirely, unashamedly normal. He doesn't even have a garden shed. The mental image packs its bags and buggers off. Thank goodness for that.
Launched only last term, Oxford Entrepreuneurs, I find out, is a student society, suported by the OxfordScience Entreprise Centre. OE has already attracted interest from national media and several businesses who are, unsurprisingly, keen to be associated with an organisation of such potential, including HSBC and Business Link. They've provided talks from top entrepreneurs, such as Trevor Baylis and James Dyson, their mission statement being, "To provide inspiration and supportt to students looking to start their own businesses through education, financial support, networking and business services". Catchy. Considerably more punchy is their motto: "Your idea. Bounce with it". Goodson explains: "We're here to encourage students to think of ideas and to develop them. No entrepreuneur has only one, single great idea. It's a continuous process, as you bounce from one idea to the next. We aim to start the ball rolling for people." He is quick to scotch the notion that only young prodigies need apply, claiming that "absolutely no prior business experience is needed. You just need to have passion, commitment and a lot of drive". Surely having a revolutionary idea would be handy, I ask? But no: "You don't even need an idea. Start seeing yourself as an entrepreneur and the ideas will come."
Several of the seven OE committee members have already done just that. The society's founder and President, Alex Hearm, reading Clasics at New College, set up a pharmaceutical lifesyle company last year called BlueFuse. He is no working with a member of faculty, Professor Strong, to commercialise a new cure for hayfever- an idea they've just entreed into the Oxford Business Plan Comptetion. Vice President, Kaori Kuribashi, a PhD student in medical engineering, supported by ISIS Innovation, came up with a novel design for a stent, a medical device used to hold open tubular body passageways such as the oesophagus. Her "eureka moment" came at an art exhibition, where she saw an origami representation of a fir cone. She realised that a similar design could be applied to stents, and, using her knowledge of origami, she did so. I smile patronisingly at Goodson's evident excitement as he recounts this tale, but the smug smile swiftly disappears as he casually informs me that her international patent is now worth $2 billion. Two billion dollars, ladies and gentlemen. That's a lot of student loans. Safa Homayoon, reading for a master's degree in Middle Eastern studies at University College, set up a medical informatics company with a website to help people with chronic diseases, raising $1 million in cash and services. He's now leading a team to develop software solutions for call centres. And then there's Goodson- doing a master's in Medieval English literature, also at Univ. he started out making limited edition prints of his sketches, making sure to put a business card in with each. Sixmonths later he got a call on his mobile from the Sales Manager of a £20 Million company called TML, and was commissioned, during one university vacation, to draw a new logo. He took such a radically novel approach to this task that ended up re-branding the entire business, at twenty years of age, and went on to launch a small advertising agency called Inspired. He also set up an absurdly successful yoga club at his first university, UEA Norwich, winning two awards. He found that members wanted to practice yoga during their vacations but the only resources available were visual- books and videos. "The point at which I realised the limitations of existing guides came when I was standing on my head and trying simultaneously to turn the pages of a yoga book!" he says. "I thought- why not have an audio CD with instructions on?" And in this way Yoga Retreat, the first creation of the publishing company he now runs from his room, was born, and is fast becoming acknowledged as the best UK yoga guide available.
A major issue facing the Entreprenuers is that of "intellectual property". Patentable ideas of Oxford students are in many cases part-owned by the university. This strikes me as a particularly sizeable pain in the arse and an enormous drawback, but OE is rather more philosophical: the help that the university provides through advice and resources- through ISIS Innovation- greatly outweighs the slight hindrance of having them take a cut of any profits you might make. Goodson illustrates this fact: "it's better to have a small slice of a massive cake than to have a tiny little cake all to yourself". It sounds like a twee Japanese proverb, but it makes sense. I am beginning to realise that, far from being a bunch of laid-back crackpots, the Entrepreneurs are very serious about what they do. I ask Goodson whether or not starting businesses scares him at all. "Of course it does. I'd be lying if I said it didn't terrify me at times. The sheer amount of work involved, not to mention the legal issues that have to be taken care of, is daunting." And, as he learned when he worked for TML, there is always the possibility of pissing people off. Apparently, the advertising agency he replaced was so incensed at being upstaged by a fresh faced student that they changed Goodson's website address, printed on the company brochure, so that no-one would be able to get in touch with him. But he insists that the potential risks of starting your own company are "lower than people might think, and in any case, outweighed by the bonuses".
Pandering to my base, capitalist desires and ask Goodson how much money he has made from his ventures so far. He laughs: "I have enough to get by. I could stop studying right now, work as a freelance in advertising and make fifty grand a year. But where's the challenge in that? There are far bigger things in the pipeline." Not satisfied, I ask him whether he has a student loan. "Of course I do" he replies, "it's interest free!" As I say goodbye and walk out into the pissing rain I realise that this is something that can't be said about the Oxford Entrepreneurs.
Matt Vaughan
To join Oxford Entrepreuners, visit bouncewithit.com. Their next event is a networking dinner at Christ Church on June 9.
22nd May 2003