Stanford EntrepreneurEntrepreneurship isn’t a career, it’s a way of life

About

Welcome to my site - a Blog about entrepreneurship at one of America’s greatest universities.

My name is Travis Kiefer and I’m a full time student at Stanford University looking to share the plethora of resources available to entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

Before Stanford

Much of my childhood was spent moving between the states of South Dakota and Minnesota. I was initially born and spent my early childhood between Aberdeen and Redfield, SD. A couple years after my parent’s divorce (when I was 8), my family then moved to Minnesota, shuffling between different houses, but staying within the same school system. By the time I was ready for high school, my family packed up and moved back to the Aberdeen area and I spent my high school years at Groton Area High School.

My passion to become an entrepreneur started in high school. During my favorite after-school activity, debate, I began reading both scholarly and newspaper articles depicting the boon and bane of businesses. I became increasingly enthralled by the cataclysmic change that business’s titans - Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and Bill Gates for example - can create and hoped to understand and replicate a fraction of their successes to create my own change.

During my senior year in high school, I decided to start a couple ventures. The first was a recycling program that collected paper products. It took time and hard work to implement, but was ultimately a success. The second, and extremely ambitious project, was to transform the scholarship industry from being a paper-based process to one that was completely online. After a successful pilot program at my school (in which over 80% of the students used the service), I decided to take a “gap year” between high school and college to transform the program into a business.

Upon graduation, I embarked on my ambitious journey full of hope and dreams. I moved out of my parents place, into an apartment, and started working at a pc repair shop to develop my computer skills. After three months, I had enough money to cut all ties and devote myself 110% to my pet project. During high school and up to this moment I had been working with a business development group that helped me incorporate and build a mentor board. My engines were fired up and I was ready to go!

Then, problems started to develop. The website wasn’t functional, no one wanted to pay for the service, and I couldn’t keep the attention of the people I was trying to help. Three frustrating months and a paltry $24 in revenue later, I was broke, disheartened, and disillusioned. I shut down the business, did some soul searching, and tried to discover what went wrong.

Two of the immediate lessons I learned were that 1.) I need to learn how to sell things other than myself, and 2.) I need to become a MUCH better web developer. So, I spent the next six months working at Office Max as a sales rep. and the final three months as web developer.

Stanford

Stepping on campus after a tough year was a great feeling. I had experienced my first complete and utter failure, and was ready to start fresh. The bright sunshine of hope and opportunity contrasted starkly with the ramen-eating, one-room efficiency apartment living, seemingly dead end life. After my first few weeks adjusting to life on campus, I was hungry for new challenges and ready to forge a new path.

I became involved with Gumball Capital, an organization whose mission is to “engage students in micro-entrepreneurship for positive social impact.” I worked as part of a three person team to develop the website for the one-week competition aspect of their organization - Gumball Challenge. I also participated in the challenge as a team-member, and helped raise nearly $500 in a week for Kiva (most of the success is attribute to the amazing team we had, the rest to random ideas that made our plan more successful.)

Why a Blog?

After the successes of the Gumball project, I began looking for more resources and opportunities on campus and the internet for college entrepreneurship. Much to my dismay, most of the information is haphazardly organized or nearly impossible to find. The goal of this blog is to find these random nuggets of gold and present them to other young, innovative, collegiate minds in a searchable, usable format.

Subscribe to my Blog

Please stay in touch with what I am up to by subscribing to my RSS feed.

I hope you enjoy my blog!