Wilbraham interns help take CampusLIVE into top three

Date: 10/20/2008

By Courtney Llewellyn

Reminder Assistant Editor



AMHERST Students from UMass Amherst are hoping to reach a college crowd the same way Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook, by creating a Web site specifically for students of that age range and giving them what they need. With those UMass students being named number three on BusinessWeek's Best Entrepreneurs 25 and Under list late last month for CampusLIVE, they are already on their way.

Cofounder Jared Stenquist, a self-taught Web developer, started the site as a hobby about a year and a half ago. CampusLIVE is a resource built for students, by students, according to Ryan Durkin, who works on business development for the budding Web site.

"It is really a portal for students to access everything they need on and off campus surrounding their college," Durkin said. "We are a homepage for students that includes search engines, Facebook, weather, news, quick links, food finder and a business directory all on one page." CampusLIVE currently has pages for 33 schools.

This expansion would not possible without the hard work of three interns from Wilbraham, however.

Matt Gentile, who worked as a marketing intern, said, "I can't begin to describe what it's like to be 21, 22 years old and working for a group of people who value your opinion from day one as if you'd been there for years. The founders of the company strive to create an environment that spurs creativity and help encourage side projects to benefit the team. I have fun everyday I'm in the office."

A recent graduate, Gentile is in the immediate pipeline to be offered a full-time job with CampusLIVE.

The two current interns are seniors Jesse Morgan and Chris Ziomek, a marketing intern and the assistant sales manager, respectively. Both were members of the Minnechaug Regional High School class of 2005.

Ziomek said he knew one of the owners of the company and that's how he got involved with its launch last year at UMass. "It's great seeing how small business works," he told Reminder Publications. "This is real world experience."

As assistant sales manager, Ziomek helps bring in revenue the site makes from advertisers. He is an economics major who speaks with businesses and restaurants on how to reach the thousands of students at the school. "There are a lot of hungry students at UMass," he joked. He plans on staying with CampusLIVE after graduation this spring because it's continuing to expand.

Morgan got involved with the site because he once lived with cofounder Boris Revsin. A marketing major, Morgan's duties include going to promotional events, like a party at the University of Connecticut last spring, and spreading the word to incoming freshmen at UMass.

"I don't know anyone who doesn't use it [CampusLIVE] or know it," Morgan said. "We get more than 10,000 hits a day." He added that he used to use it all the time before becoming an intern for the business.

"You're not one of 20,000 students on here," Ziomek explained. "You're one with 20,000." And that number is set to grow CampusLIVE has a lofty goal of creating a page for every college in the country.

"It's been astonishing [how quickly it's been growing]," Ziomek continued. "The UMass social life has become the CampusLIVE social life."

Ziomek and Morgan are both excited about their company being named to BusinessWeek's top young entrepreneurs list.

"That was great, tremendous," Morgan said. "We threw a party to celebrate that."

"It was very exciting being named number three after being on the job for only a year," Ziomek stated. "I was a little bit skeptical about it at first, like it didn't seem real, but it's definitely an accomplishment. Now we're aiming for number one."

The hard work doesn't end with CampusLIVE being recognized by a seminal business magazine, though. The next step is the "Community Platforms" initiative, which will bring together student government, registered clubs, athletic teams, fraternities and sororities and administration with the community at large.

"With smaller towns, like Amherst, a university can become a town," Ziomek explained. "The community and college become one. It's been a little difficult bringing it all together but not as hard as you think. It's easy to get lost at a big university. This will help everyone get on the same page."

"We want to make [CampusLIVE available] for all of Amherst," Morgan added. He will be working on an event that will take place at the center of town to promote the new platforms initiative.

"Our team of five full-time employees and group of interns is doing big things," Durkin said. "Being ranked number three in BusinessWeek as the 'Best Young Entrepreneurs of 2008' gave us extreme motivation to do even better than we are doing now. We have a great team. We have a great product."

To see the other young entrepreneurs CampusLIVE was up against, visit www.businessweek.com. To see CampusLIVE itself, visit www.campuslive.com.