My Story: Businesses Save, College Students Earn

The Arizona Republic recently selected Sean Coleman as one of their Top Young Entrepreneurs in the state (men’s list). This list highlights entrepreneurs who established and operate successful ventures based in Arizona. This year's honorees span a variety of fields, including retail, technology, financial services, marketing, transportation and “green” energy. Read Sean’s story below to learn how he transformed a smart idea into a marketable enterprise.

I’ve always had the feeling that deep down, I was born an entrepreneur. Ever since I was young, I’ve been known to find ways to capitalize on my skills and opportunities. In elementary school, I remember outsourcing chores to my sister and friends for a fraction of what I would get paid. Recognizing my spirit for capitalism, my parents decided to help me learn about the real world by taxing my allowance throughout my youth. However, entrepreneurship isn’t exactly the ideal career choice parents want for their kids. Telling my dad I wanted to start a business was like telling him I wanted to play major league baseball after high school. It took several years of college and a few failed ventures to fully realize my passion.

During my junior year at Arizona State University, I started my big idea: an online marketplace to match small businesses with college students for paid projects and internships. Small businesses can login, describe any work they need done and immediately be matched with the ideal student workers for the job. Additionally, students can search and apply for freelance projects such as graphic design, web development or writing.

Beginning in high school and then into college, I had worked for various small businesses on freelance projects in areas of logo design, graphic design and web development. Throughout those years, I’d developed a clientele base of more than 100 businesses across the country, mostly through personal referrals. Customers continuously remarked that my quality of work far exceeded their expectations and my fee was very modest when compared to larger design firms—though I was paid extremely well for a college student. After several years of freelance work, I recognized the market need for a streamlined way for small businesses to locate and hire student freelancers.  

I have always been a person of action, so in October 2008 I approached a few close friends and clients with the concept of OrangeSlyce. Students and businesses loved the idea and couldn’t wait to start using it. With this encouragement, I formed a team with my close friends and applied for the Entrepreneurship Advantage Project which offered a $2,000 grant toward the start-up of new ventures. A month later, our team was notified that we were a recipient of the grant. On January 1st 2009, OrangeSlyce LLC was an official reality.

We experienced many challenges and learned several lessons during the first six months of OrangeSlyce—lessons from which I hope other student entrepreneurs can learn. My first lesson is that you should not go into business with friends. Building a team is a difficult task that you must do strategically to ensure that members have similar goals, mindsets and agree on business matters. The second lesson is that $2,000 doesn’t go nearly as far as you’d think. After purchasing domain names from GoDaddy, registering for hosting providers, and applying for a limited liability company, we realized that doing a full scale launch at Arizona State University and across the country would require additional funding.

The third lesson I learned had to do with leveraging your personal network of contacts and people who want to see you succeed in your endeavor. The biggest challenge for OrangeSlyce was developing the online system for matching small businesses and students. With very little funding, we realized we needed an alternative, (cheap) way to have our website developed. As a computer engineering student, I was familiar with the senior capstone project, where local businesses proposed industry projects for students to work on. With this in mind, I applied as an industry mentor to ASU’s School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, was accepted, and subsequently made my presentation to a capstone class. After being accepted by a vote from the students, OrangeSlyce had a team of eager student developers working on our website.

Although the capstone team struggled with the unfamiliar concepts of web development, they made great progress towards a prototype. Unfortunately, development stopped in May with summer break, leaving OrangeSlyce looking for new ways to complete development. We interviewed several local development firms before choosing DevFu LLC to finish the website. At that point, my dedication and faith in the business was tested. I did what may be one of the hardest things for any entrepreneur and invested most of my savings into the company. Personal financial risk, however, is often what is required if your venture is to succeed. I took a leap of faith and haven’t looked back.

Up until now, OrangeSlyce has made leaps and bounds towards our mission. We obtained additional funding to complete development through friends and family using convertible debt (a debt financing instrument that converts to equity ownership at the time of angel-level investment). We’ve received excellent mentorship from our advisory board, filled out our management team, and cultivated great relationships with small businesses and local associations. Most importantly, we are launching our beta website on November 9th at www.orangeslyce.com. At this point, we are investigating ways to secure angel funding in order to expand OrangeSlyce at ASU and scale the service to colleges across the country.  

I have one final lesson: starting a business takes passion and perseverance. If I had listened to any of the dozens of people that have told me I was on the wrong path, I wouldn’t be where I am today. The path to success may be littered with failures, but these two qualities—passion and perseverance—these move us forward and ultimately toward success.

Submitted by Sean Coleman, ASU student and CEO of OrangeSlyce