Drew Gay, Grey Mullinax, and Anthony Cargile are launching a tech company called co+create. co+create is a place for ideas to thrive and eventually exist in the market. It is a social network community where anyone can express their ideas for a product or service in a secure, collaborative environment. This interconnected community will allow the creator’s idea(s) to be influenced and improved by an abundance of minds, rather than the traditional few. Once the idea has been polished, the Creator will have access to funding and the professional services they need to make their product or service a reality. Degree or no degree, entrepreneur or not, business knowledge or lack thereof, this platform is limited to no one; everyone is invited and capable. co+create truly levels the playing field.
Name: Drew GayHometown: Kennesaw, GAYear: 2015Major: International Business
What are you involved in at the College of Charleston? I was President of the International Club during the 2013-2014 academic year. Currently, I’m a Global Scholar.
Can you give us a little insight on how this application works? Post an idea. The idea can be legally protected if you’d like. Once the idea is exposed to the co+create community, it can be refined with suggestions from the crowd. If your idea gains traction, you can seek funding in the form of donations, investments, lending, and crowd funding. Next, build your idea with the resources available on co+create. This could include developers, accountants, attorneys, marketing services, manufacturers, and more. Now that you’ve built your product or service and are ready to launch, you can notify your followers and influencers to start building and engaging with your customer base.
What inspired you to develop this company? In 2013, I had plans to start a home automation company with my cousin who works in nanotechnology and it ended up not working out for multiple reasons. However, it wasn’t a net loss. Through that experience, I learned that I loved the creative process of building solutions from scratch. We would define a problem and come up with about a hundred bad ideas on how to solve that problem and, eventually, one would stick that could be viable. Some of the ideas would get wild. It was fun. When I became closer friends with Grey, we both realized we loved that creative process. Eventually, we came up with the idea for co+create and shortly after met Anthony. Anthony is a developer at Apple and has been employed at Google in the past. He definitely had significant influence in what co+create is today. Anthony built us a prototype website within four days of the first time we met. Needless to say, we are excited to have him on board.
How long has this project been in the works? Since we filed as an LLC in February 2015.
How do you hope this project will affect the general community in the long-run? We envision co+create as the platform that gives a voice to the people without a microphone. Not everyone can gain an audience in front of investors or just walk into a bank and obtain a business loan. This stems from a lack of credibility. With your idea’s exposure to the co+create community, this audience becomes accessible. Roughly 10% of the U.S. economy is comprised of entrepreneurs. We refuse to believe only 10% of a population can form great ideas. We want to truly level the playing field.
What opportunities or experiences at the College of Charleston do you think have helped you along the way? The biggest thing I’ve gained at CofC that I didn’t anticipate was how valuable the free resources offered by the university would be. I’ve added invaluable people to my network through the resources the business school has provided. My best example is the business-mentoring program. I got matched up with a local executive that sits on eight boards in the greater Charleston community. To say he’s well connected is an understatement. Through using that free resource, I gained access to him and his extensive network. The coolest thing about all of this is that he’s going through the legal process with his company right now to be released to work for co+create on the side. He loves the concept and says it solves multiple problems. Our concept excited him enough to want to join the co+create team.
What advice would you give to people who wish to start their own company? If you’re passionate about something, don’t give up on pursuing it. We’ve gotten plenty of weird looks and questions while building co+create but we keep pushing. We may end up failing but we’ll learn from it and take those lessons into the next venture.
When will everyone be able to use this service? co+create should be available for use through our mobile app and website by the end of the summer.