The Business of Writing - Lundquist College of Business - University ...

center Spotlight
lUndqUIst C enter for entreP reneU rshIP
From left of right: Jake Horton ’08, Scott Rasmussen ’08,
and John Robinson ’08 bring the social aspects of golf
online with a new business venture.
BEyoNd thE faIrWay
Three undergraduate students tee up a business venture that links golfers online
and scores an eagle with investors.
t hree Lundquist College of Business sophomores—all with a passion for golf—sit at a
table, tossing around ideas and drawing a map of a business—on napkins. Today, two years
later, they have launched a new Internet-based interactive services company targeted to
young golfers. How?
“We didn’t have anything,” said John Robinson, one of three seniors who started
GolfingMyWay.com, a social networking site (kind of like FaceBook or MySpace) for links
players age 13 through 26. “The Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship (LCE) provided us
everything we needed. We got assigned a faculty advisor, and he helped us identify a market
need, write a solid plan, write an investment pitch—and network.”
Undergraduate Coordinator of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Dick Sloan is the advisor
to Robinson and his two cofounders and fellow students, Scott Rasmussen and Jake Horton.
“Dick has gone out on a limb, helping us to get comfortable with investors outside the school
and further network in the area where we will be headquartered,” Horton said.
According to Sloan, GolfingMyWay.com embodies a main goal of LCE: to provide
students with a framework and state-of-the art techniques and tools to identify legitimate
business opportunities and then to help them construct a business model and a strategy
to launch that business.
Already, with assistance from Sloan and Randy Swangard, the center’s managing director,
the three-student team has secured $75,000 in angel financing. And the trio incorporated last
spring after being accepted as a client by Cooley Godward Kronish, LLP, the national law firm
that represents such technology giants as Adobe Systems, America Online, Yahoo!, and eBay.
“Dick and Randy are very good at networking and getting graduates of LCE to help out,”
Robinson said. “Without alumni, we wouldn’t have had the good feedback.”
Through connections maintained by Lundquist College of Business faculty, the three students
successfully transitioned their classroom experiences to the realities of entrepreneurship.
“It’s important to recognize that until students actually go out and experience pitching the
idea in front of people, it is so different from class,” Robinson explained.
The GolfingMyWay team also gained exposure to investors on the business plan
competition circuit. The three students participated in Colorado State University’s Venture
Adventure business plan competition in April 2007 and in Boise State University’s Venture
Championship, where they placed second and earned an honorable mention in March 2008.
A week later, Robinson, Rasmussen, and Horton took all that coaching to the Seattle
Golf Trade Show and signed 200 registrants as another step in building the value of their
website—and their ideas.