After months of dividing his time between studying accounting at BostonUniversity and tracking down investors for his e-commerce site, Jeff Gutdecided it was time to make a choice, reports the Wired News.The twin stresses of final exams and meetings with venture capitalistsbecame too much to juggle. Eventually the demands of running an Internetstart-up won out. ``I realised that if I was going to raise money, I wasgoing to have to take off from school,'' said Gut, 20, who founded thestudent oriented furniture site, CollegiateMall.com, in his sophomore year.He took a semester's leave of absence before returning, finding time to takeclasses only part-time. Now university officials are looking for ways toprevent other students from having to choose between staying in school andstarting a company.
Boston University last week launched a programme that makes it easier forstudents to get funding for new businesses while continuing their academicstudies. Dubbed the Michael Bronner E-Business Center and Hatchery, theprogramme plans to match venture capitalists with students who have businessplans. The programme started with an undisclosed contribution MichaelBronner, founder of the Internet consulting firm, Digitas, who himselfdropped out of Boston University 20 years ago to start a coupon marketingbusiness.
Bronner said he saw a need for universities to use their resources andconnections to help entrepreneurial students get their businesses underway.``If I'd had access to an organised set of resources, it would've been veryvaluable,'' he said. ``I likely would have stayed in school to finish thefew courses that I didn't finish.''
The increasingly fast pace at which Internet ventures evolve from mereconcepts to start-up companies makes it particularly crucial foruniversities to offer support, said Louis Lataif, dean of the School ofManagement at Boston University. Students worry that if they don't followthrough with an idea right away, someone else will do it first.
``There have always been students leaving to start businesses, but I thinkthere's a little more of a sense of urgency now,'' Lataif said. Althoughuniversities aren't seeing a mass exodus of students ditching their studiesto join dot.coms, a few universities report such cases are on the rise.
One card, smart card
One card that can do everything, a lifestyle card, is the ideal smart cardfor 80 per cent of consumers, according to a recent survey by MasterCardInternational. This was one of the findings of a survey of consumers inAustralia, China and Singapore.
The key findings of the survey are:
While 80 per cent expressed their wish for an ``all-in-one'' smartcard, an even higher number-85 per cent-seek a card that would allow themenough flexibility to add or remove programmes as they desired. Examples ofprogrammes include credit card, driver's licence, medical records and publictransportation payments. The added security of chip-based smart cards is clearly a compellingdraw as 70 per cent believe smart cards are more secure than regular cards(magnetic stripe cards). The average Australian carries 5.6 cards in his wallet, compared toSingaporeans who have 4.5 cards. Chinese consumers, on average, have only1.8 cards each. Consumers across all three markets unanimously selected the sameprogrammes they wished to include in one card: Credit card information/usage/history ATM information/usage Bank information Debit card information/usage Cash (or stored-value) card for every day payments``The migration from regular magnetic stripe cards to chip-based smart cardscontinues throughout the region and we predict a huge increase inmulti-function smart cards in 2000,'' says Jonathon Gould, seniorvice-president for marketing, Asia-Pacific, MasterCard International.
Selling cars online
General Motors is looking at expanding its British experiment of sellingcars online to other parts of the world, GM officials have said. The world'slargest automaker said a similar strategy to the one used by GM's BritishVauxhall unit since November will likely be used elsewhere in some form inEurope, said Michael Burns, GM Europe's president, at the Geneva Motor Show,reports Reuters.
``We're looking at other possibilities,'' he said. ``I think you'll see thesame kind of approach used elsewhere in Europe in various countries. As wesee continued and growing use of the Internet in Europe, I think this willbecome an important medium for transactions,'' he added. ``We expect it tobuild slowly.''
Since the programme was launched in November in Britain, only 200 vehicleshave been sold online, compared with thousands of hits at GM's Website,Burns said. He said no one model will be used as the idea is adapted to eachmarket, but GM dealers will be involved from the beginning. GM has said thatany online deals would involve dealers, as the Vauxhall experiment has.
GM has also said in the past that any such effort in the United States wouldinvolve the support of its dealers. GM president G Richard Wagoner Jr saidGM is also looking at selling vehicles directly online in other parts of theworld. He identified Taiwan as one possible market because of GM's limiteddistribution network there.
Total online purchasing in the United States is less than 1 per cent of themarket, but that could triple over the next few years, said Mark Hogan,president of e-GM, the automaker's online unit. For now, however, theemphasis in the auto industry remains on the business-to-business end of themarket with the deal announced last week that GM, Ford Motor Co., andDaimlerChrysler AG would combine their online supply procurement efforts tocut costs and speed vehicle development, Wagoner said.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.