CONSTANT BETA

College entrepreneurs fascinate me. Partly because I always wanted to start something of my own in college and partly because I was too chicken to actually start it.

I had the opportunity to speak with Russell D’souza of Evolving Vox about this company and being a young entrepreneur. He shared one deadly piece of advice -armed with that simple knowledge, any of us has the chance to become start the billion-dollar entreprise.

I spent 4 years of college waiting and searching for the right time, and the right idea. I’m afraid neither exists. All you need to know to be an entrepreneur is, a simple idea AND the simple understanding that now, is the right time.

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Russell D’Souza and Jack Groetzinger started Evolving Vox, a a temporary furntiure ownership business, late last year. Join be in conversation with one-half of the team, Russell D’souza.

Tell me about Evolving Vox? What a strange name!

So Evolving Vox is a furtniture rental company. Right now, we serve only Darmouth College. Darmouth students can log on to our website, pick what they want to order, add it to a shopping cart and pay for it. They can choose the length of the lease on each piece of furniture. Once we recieve their order, our job is to deliver the furtniture and on an assigned date, pick it up from their apartments.

About the name, Evolving Vox is derived from our school motto… play on a Dartmouth College tradition. It holds a special meaning to Dartmouth students.. It’s not something everyone would understand but people here, know what it means.

Did you have prior experience in starting your own business?

No. We have no previous experience but my friend and business partner, Jack ,and I are very entrepreneurial. Dartmouth is a liberal arts college and doesn’t really offer business courses at the undergrad level. Skills we gained to run this business didnt’ really come from our college, Dartmouth doesn’t focus on imparting entrepreneurial skills in undergrads. We both had internships in Boston last summer with consulting firms and that’s where we picked up some skills. But I think we’ve just learnt a lot from doing it.

How did you get this idea? It sounds like a no-brainer. I remember furniture was such a hassle in college. You needed it but you didn’t want it…

We got the idea early last year when we noticed the amount of furniture waste that accumulates at the end of semester. The real idea came from targetting the waste. The reason we liked this idea — it was risk free. It didn’t require that much to set up. We never had a business plan and we still don’t have one. The first step we needed was a website. The goal was that students should be able to rent furniture online in less than 5 minutes.

We actually only started the business last fall. We weren’t sure what to expect but….it was unbelievable. Within a week, we had to stop taking orders. We were anxious to see what would happen. We had about 45 orders for futons alone. We didn’t want to deal with more because we wanted to be sure we could handle it logistically first.

How does this work out? Did you buy the furniture to rent it out?

No. We didn’t buy anything at first. We didn’t place the order for the furniture until we had the orders coming in. We got the furniture from wholesalers. Dartmouth runs on a trimester system so between trimesters, we have bulk storage that we use. But most of the stuff is always rented out.

So this business didn’t really require a capital or any investment? I’m surprised no one thought of this before.

Not monetary, no. Yes, we are surprised too. We have made people’s lives convenient. I was unprepared for the response. Everyone we have talked with or served talks about this idea. Even people we don’t serve have gone out of their way to email us and tell us what a good idea it is. It is such an intutive idea that almost everyone goes, why didn’t I think of this before?

What about profits? Are you seeing any yet?

The furniture rental business is impossible to operate on a profit within the first year. There is strong potential in the furniture rental business and we have an edge over other rental companies by having actual people on the ground. We have contacts with students and that helps spreading the word. We haven’t spent a single dime on marketing. We sent out flyers, emails to listservs and passed around flyers to our friends. It was very low-budget. Also, people know you on campus and that helps. It’s easier to trust someone you know…

We are in talks with Cornell University right now. We have a ground-team set, it is imperative to have a ground team. They have access to dorms and emails that rental companies don’t.

Besides, we have a good sense of where the company is headed. We don’t really want to handle the operations and administrative tasks of the business. We would like to sell our branches at some point, just the delivery and leasing process. But we’d like to keep the ability to franchise it. Ofcourse, we would use a different name, Evolving Vox wouldn’t work universally. We are adamant, we have no desire to keep the nuts and bolts, the operation end of the business. I think we will be able to sell it this winter.

Is this decision because of competition or are you just not intersted ?

Competition – there’s really nothing that we can do about it. Press is great, it helps us build credibility but it’s a double-edged sword. The more recognition we get, it enables people to hink that anyone can put this together. But it’s not like we are the first kids to do this. At Harvard, you can rent micorwaves and refrigerators but people haven’t seen what can really be done with this rental business. It will be a matter of time before everyone catches up. But I hope by then, our business will be thinking in a newer directions. But anything can happen, there’s really nothing we can do.

Jack and I are both working in Boston now. We are both consulting. The way that we see our future with EV it’s not time intensive. The business can run by itself with little supervision.

Speaking with you, I get a sense that Evolving Vox is more of an experiment for you guys…to test out your entrepreneurial spirit. I don’t mean that in a negative way, I think it’s great but I get the feeling that you are doing this to see how far you can go and what you can learn from this experience. Am I right?

You got that right. You put it well. It is definitely an experiment. If you ask both of us what we want to do in 10 years, it is definitely something of our own. Even though we have lost money so far, there’s no doubt that we will end up making money. Most entrepreneurs fail like 5 times, I believe in starting modestly and learning from my mistakes.

Too many people focus on coming up with this really cool world-changing idea of reinventign the wheel. Yes, maybe youtube.com can be that idea but… they all started out because somebody saw something in their life that was an inconvenience and they wanted to do something about it. Youtube founders were just sitting at their dinner table and wanted to put up their home videos online. They didn’t do it expecting this huge reaction. Small inconveniences are something in your life that can be made better. I think that’s what students should look for.

What mistakes have you made to date and what have you learnt from them?

Well…we knew very little about the way futons work, in terms of mechanism. The futons we got intially weren’t really the good ones. You could feel the frame through the mattress. Our company prides on delivering good quality… so it wasn’ something we wanted to deliver. We end up having to spend $20 more each mattress and upgrading them. We could have done something else.. tested out that mattress or just stuck with it,  but it was really tough in making that last second decision. We lost a couple thousand dolars but in the end, we definitely did a better thing by not compromising on quality. The decision was a no brainer for us, but it hurt us. It was just something we had to do.

Lesson well-learnt. That decision of yours must have won you some very loyal customers. What are future plans with EV?

There’s a realization now that you can take crazy college kids and learn from then. It’s really the internet, it’s a whole new ball game. Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth offers a student consulting service that help out new businesses. Such a service will help us tremendously in figuring out next steps and what we can do with our business. We haven’t been accepted yet, they have an application procedure – but we hope we will be expected!

What’s so fantastic about being a student or a college entrepreneur?

I think what is really fascinating about being a college entrepreneur in this day and age is.. there are so few barriers to entry in starting a new company. Not just young people or college entrepreneurs, anyone can start a new company on a little or no budget. There are a number of riskless opportunities. We talk about new ideas all the time. You no longer need a storefront: credit cards, secure payments, Business2.0 is fascinating. But I find that most new businesses are looking to make immediate profits. I think if you have a good service, you will find a way to make money.

The best thing about being a college entrepreneur is that everyone wants you to win. You have the network of your college: friends, alumni, professors. The CEO of the largest furniture company in New England is a Dartmouth alumni. He took time out to speak with us. He didn’t give us anything concreate but point us- people are willing to talk to you. They’ll say, “I can’t help you but I’ll give you more contacts.”

Your advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

One of our professors said that Everyday people see million dollar ideas and just don’t recognize them. That sums it up. My only advice is to Start. Don’t wait for inspiration or that big idea to strike! Just do something.