Business Opportunities Weblog

February 17, 2011 by Angela Shupe | 2 Comments

A business idea is nothing unless you can get it off the ground. With that thought in mind, there is a new website that helps students do just that.

FledgeWing is dedicated to helping entrepreneurial college students receive ideas and feedback that will help them successfully launch their own business. Their service is available to students in over 270 schools, and it is 100% free. It may cost money to launch a business, but a free resource like this is invaluable to any student that is just getting started.

I recently asked the founder of FledgeWing, Lewis Drummond, a few questions about his website and what it does.

Tell us a little about FledgeWing.

FledgeWing.com is a platform for entrepreneurial university students founded in October 2007. It is designed as a ‘one-stop shop’ for students to discover new ideas and get the required help and feedback they need to get their next venture off of the ground. We do this through networking students with complimentary skill sets, mentoring with real-world professionals, startup-advice and commentary articles, brainstorming areas, and project collaboration tools.

What inspired it?

The concept was inspired over the summer of 2007, as my fellow co-founder, Josh Myers, and I were coming up with new ventures of our own. As college students ourselves at the time, we struggled to find an existing resource for student entrepreneurs. Obtaining mentoring from professionals who have been there before, networking with students and potential business partners, and receiving valuable feedback on ideas was more difficult than it should have been. FledgeWing was the answer.

How does it work?

To start off, many students discuss their ideas in our ‘Idea Pitch’ area. Organized by industry, it allows students to hear feedback on their potential ventures and meet fellow students with similar interests. When they are ready to take it to the next stage, students create a Project, a public or private collaboration area with tickets, forums, tagging and details about the venture itself. As the project grows, users can reach out to our mentors for advice or enter in our business plan competitions.

For those students just interested in learning more about entrepreneurship, they can peruse our articles and case study section, or attend one of our networking events. They can also use our advanced search feature to find other FledgeWing members using specific criteria.

What are some benefits that student entrepreneurs will receive when they sign up and use your service?

Aside from the main site features mentioned above, we have several other functionalities we offer to the benefit of our users. For one, all FledgeWing users agree to our proprietary intellectual property agreement when they join the site. In a nutshell, it is designed to protect all of our users’ ideas and reassure students that they can feel free to discuss their ventures. Secondly, all users have an eBay-style feedback rating system, ensuring that there is little spam on the site. Lastly, with a Facebook application, RSS news feeds, e-mail notifications and saved search functionality, students can participate with FledgeWing as much or as little as they like.

I noticed that your list of schools does not include all of the schools available in the US, do you have any plans to add more in the future?

We currently have links with over 270 universities worldwide, though mostly in the US. We regularly add more supported institutions to our list as students or faculty reach out to us and enough demand is generated.

What separates you from the competition?

FledgeWing differentiates itself in a number of ways. Firstly, the platform is completely free and has no advertising. We also have our unique IP agreement to safeguard our users’ interests. Additionally, to this date, we believe we’re one of the few online communities focused solely on student entrepreneurship in universities across the globe. There are some school and regionally-based entrepreneurial communities out there, but we believe that’s not the most efficient way to match students by competency, skill, interest and business acumen.

Besides the recently launched FledgeWing.in for India, do you have any plans to expand your website into more countries?

FledgeWing was designed to be an international platform and support many languages. At present, we have no immediate plans to open FledgeWing in specific other countries, but we are open to ideas and currently looking into which other emerging economies may benefit from a platform such as ours. The next logical step might be a Spanish-version of the site though.

What are some lessons your website has taught you?

FledgeWing has taught me several lessons. In this day and age, it is entirely possible to start a venture with a small budget and minimal overhead. The days of needing $500k+ for startups, particularly in the technology sector, are over. Secondly, web developers are never on time. Whatever deadline you give them, be prepared for it to take twice as long. It doesn’t matter if you have a bulletproof contract in place, because it’s hard to start from scratch with a new developer when your project is 80% complete. Lastly, I learned to be prepared to have a scalable and flexible site. Over the years, FledgeWing has added and removed sections, improved our interface, and added new languages. This is a lot harder to do if your codebase and mindset is focused on a particular look or design.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Be sure to leverage social media to launch your new venture. For instance, using Facebook Connect with FledgeWing allows us to tap in to 600 million users, and have them access our site easily, with practically zero cost.

If you could only share one piece of advice on student entrepreneurship, what would you say?

Be patient. Even amazing ideas take longer than you expect to come to fruition.

In Featured, Interviews | 2 Comments
Tags: Education, Resources, Students