Even money-seeking entrepreneurs can muster up the occasional philanthropic deed — as long as it’s in the name of school spirit.
Last winter, fifth-year McCormick senior Majid Boroujerdi was looking to turn a profit from Northwestern undergraduates. He wanted to be a venture capitalist for student entrepreneurs — he’d lend them money and get a share of the profits. It was a shrewd plan.
Problem was, he was operating on campus. Fearing NU would eventually catch on to his little business, he shut it down.
But before doing so, he discovered something: lots of students want to start businesses but have no organization to assist them.
So Boroujerdi decided he would do the university a service by creating Entrepreneurship Enterprises, Inc., on his own.
“I felt bad about dropping the idea all of a sudden just because I won’t be making money out of it anymore,” Boroujerdi said. “And I saw a great opportunity here.”
EEI, a nonprofit organization, is modeled after Harvard Student Agencies, Inc., the largest student-run corporation in the world. The mission of EEI is “to provide students the opportunity to discover, develop and continually manage businesses while providing educational opportunities to learn about entrepreneurship.”
“Entrepreneurship is popular right now,” Boroujerdi said. “People are losing jobs and this is the fallback, whether it be starting a business or eBay or whatnot.”
Because in addition to Harvard, Columbia and Princeton universities both have similar organizations, Boroujerdi said part of his reason for starting EEI was to keep NU competitive.
“This being my fifth year here, so I bleed a little bit of purple,” he said. “I care about this university, I care about the students here and I want to make sure we’re as great a university as we can be.”
Once EEI is launched, the company will focus on starting one of two businesses, “FreshFace,” or NUBA, the Northwestern University Booking Agency.
“FreshFace” will be a guidebook to Chicago that Boroujerdi said he hopes to be able to sell in bookstores and distribute to incoming freshmen using NU funding. NUBA will be an enterprise that hires out NU talent — such as writers, performers and engineers — to the surrounding community.
With help from McCormick Prof. William White, Boroujerdi received about $10,000 from NU to launch EEI. The group has also received help from the Illinois Technology Enterprise Corporation in Evanston, a business that helps entrepreneurs with consulting, accounting and technology.
White will be one of the primary board members for overseeing operations, Boroujerdi said. The two have been consulting every week to get the business off the ground.
“He’s integral to the success of the business,” Boroujerdi added.
Boroujerdi and McCormick junior Puja Bhojnagarwala, who co-founded packaging company NU Solutions, sent out applications to undergraduates for executive positions on Monday. Boroujerdi said he hopes EEI will have a president, vice president and six core team members selected by Nov. 24 so business can start the first week of January.
“(NU) needs it a lot,” Bhojnagarwala said. “I wish someone had come up with it earlier.”
In the meantime, Boroujerdi and Bhojnagarwala are doing everything they can to spread the word about EEI.
“This organization will give you the opportunity to make mistakes with real money … and real processes that you cannot practice in the classroom,” Boroujerdi said. “You can learn all the details of how to run a business, so once you go into the real world, you’ll be a step ahead of your competitors.”
Applications for executive positions for EEI are due Oct. 31. Interested students should e-mail Boroujerdi at [email protected].
Reach Anthony Tao at [email protected]
