How We Started a Company in College with $400, No Experience, & No Clue What We Were Doing

Starting a Business During Our Freshman Year in College

We created ROCS during our freshman year at George Mason University with no real clue as to what we were doing. The two of us combined had a total of 0 years experience in human resources or staffing and a whopping $400 in funding to work with (Brandon’s $200 was credit from downsizing his campus meal plan.) We didn’t know much about the student job market we were entering other than the fact that we didn’t really like it.

Ignoring the Haters

When telling people about our new business start-up idea years ago, we got many reactions. The majority being: chuckling, doubting, and waiting for a punch-line (when we stopped talking, they thought a punch-line was coming.)

Our Secret Recipe

So how did we get the company to where it is today from only $400 and no business plan? It’s pretty simple:

We told people who we were
We told them what we could do for them
We worked as hard as we could to get the job done
And if we messed up anywhere along the way, we admitted it

Thats basically it. No secret recipes. If you expected more, sorry. This process has worked for us so far and we think its the best way to have a chance of becoming a great company. It’s not very complicated. It can be extremely demanding, challenging, and time consuming—but not complicated.

Keeping Things Simple

We avoid arduous processes, strict rules or complex plans for the company to follow. They slow things down and never work. What we do have instead, are some simple phrases that we use to keep us going in the right direction.

A few Concepts & Ideas we live by:

We will be adding our thoughts and reasoning of each throughout the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned for the updated posts..

About Brandon

Brandon is the ceo and co-founder and started ROCS during his freshman year at George Mason University at the age of 19. He was a recipient of the '05 Global Student Entrepreneur Award and in '08 he received Startup Nation’s Dorm-Based 20 Award. He was also coauthor of the '07 book "Student Entrepreneurs: Graduating with a Profit." In addition to ROCS, Brandon helped start and serves on the Board of Directors for the Youth Business Initiative (YBI), an organization to help youth in foster care successfully transition to independence. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Dulles SHRM as the Student Chapter Liaison & Scholarship Coordinator and is a National Member of the Society for Human Resource Management. In his spare time, he also serves as a guest lecturer at Universities and keynote speaker on various panels regarding young entrepreneurship.

View all posts by Brandon →

4 Responses to How We Started a Company in College with $400, No Experience, & No Clue What We Were Doing

John Marchan says:

July 22, 2009 at 7:16 pm

Great simple write-up! I believe this. When I was in college, I started my own ‘web design’ company and got many clients who were at first skeptical. I never did lie to them though – I admitted I was a student, still learning, but was willing to work hard to deliver on their needs and it worked. 8 Years later, I still go by the same belief in honesty and treating people properly. They will come back for more and more and bring friends along with them.
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