2 Great College Startups

- At the tender age of 14, Jessica Mah sold her first company, which rented server space to small businesses, at a marginal profit. She then set up jessicamah.com and began to blog about business and technology from a young person's perspective. Last fall, Mah, now a Berkeley junior, came up with the idea for a new venture, which she began to chronicle on the site. "All of us were looking for internships, and I had no clue where to start," Mah says. "This is how business ideas begin: You want to do something, and you run into problems." Equal parts Craigslist and Mediabistro, the new site, InternshipIN, helps students identify high-quality internships—i.e., internships that do not involve "getting coffee and making copies," Mah says. Much of the initial traffic has come through a partnership with SimplyHired, a job search engine. Eventually, Mah hopes to begin charging employers a fee to post listings on the site.




- Last year, Caroline Rooney launched The Bearon, an upbeat T-shirt line sold primarily through her own website and independent sales reps on six other college campuses, including the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Syracuse University, and Northwestern. The 19-year-old is donating 20 percent of the profit from every shirt sold to three charities: UNICEF, the Alzheimer's Foundation, and New York City's Public Art Fund. For marketing, she maintains a page on Facebook, holds events with campus Greek organizations, and often speaks at assemblies and club meetings. She also maintains a blog on her website, thebearon.com, on which she promotes her favorite artists and photographers, and posts photographs of customers wearing her shirts in cities around the world. "It's getting to the point where I don't recognize some of the people who are sending in orders, calling in questions, or walking around campus wearing the shirts," Rooney says. "That's when you know the word of mouth has gone to the next level, and that's really exciting."