Last Wednesday, I attended the second annual Northeastern Entrepreneurship Expo (NEXPO) held on the ground floor of Curry Student Center. NEXPO is a celebration of the entrepreneurial groups, students and organizations throughout the Northeastern and Boston communities held by the Inter-Disciplinary Entrepreneurship Accelerator group on campus.
At the event, entrepreneurs and student ventures that work with IDEA had the opportunity to showcase their startup company, business or venture as well as network with other students and entrepreneurs. It was a great opportunity to see some of the things Northeastern students and graduates have been working on, as well as the enthusiasm these individuals have as they turn their ideas into realities—as well as a source of revenue.
Tyler Smith, a senior at Northeastern (who was also featured as a campus celebrity) was in attendance, showcasing his website Brewspy.com as well as explaining his idea for a second website. Smith original website, Brewpsy.com, is a website that helps to connect individuals in the Boston area with cheap bar deals. Smith’s new website will be more focused on finding out where individual’s friends are going out at night. The idea is similar to Four Square, however individuals will be able to check in somewhere beforethey actually go, in order to help make plans with their friends.
The men from University Apparel, LLC were also attending, showcasing their t-shirts that parody Nike’s slogan “Just Do It.” Charles Svirk, a middle entrepreneurship major who helped found University Apparel (formally known as NUde Wear) explained how now in addition to “Just NU it” for Northeastern students, they have begun to incorporate other schools into the mix.
“Just DU it” for Duke University and “Just VT it” for Virginia Tech University are just two examples of how they have expanded. You maybe remember earlier Huntington News articles citing that Nike was suing their company for using the slogan, yet the young businessmen don’t seem too concerned about that and are mostly just focusing on expanding their business.
The third venture I thought was really cool was DrinkTV, showcased by Sean Castro from The Rummager’s Group. Castro explained how DrinkTV will eventually feature drinking games specifically for television shows, so that individuals may go to the website and finding drinking game rules for essentially any show they would like to make a drinking game out of. Castro gave an example citing Jersey Shore: “Like for Jersey Shore, you would have to drink every time you see an Ed Hardy t-shirt.”
Though the event was mostly male-dominated, I was able to speak to Paradees Safizadeh from Greenhorn Connect, a website made for entrepreneurs,by entrepreneurs. Paradees is the social media chair of the company, which helps to connect entrepreneurs within the Boston area to resources they may need to help their business or startup company succeed. The website also features a calendar of events pertaining to the interests of entrepreneurs, as well as news about different startup companies and founders within the Boston area. Paradees herself went to Boston College, but the four young men she works with are graduates from Northeastern.
Learning about all of these ventures that stem from the minds of Northeastern students really made me proud of our school and the accomplishments students have made. If you’d like to learn more about any of these ventures, or have a great idea yourself that you want to explore, contact the IDEA student group at Northeastern: http://www.northeastern.edu/