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A graduate course at UNM proves that students can start their own business even when they’re still stuck in school.
Finance professor Fred Mondragon teaches Management 557, “Launching Your Entrepreneurial Business,” a course that requires students to create a formal business plan. He said students can only stay in the class if he approves their business plan. Once accepted, students are given a $3,500 loan, which comes from grant money, and will be co-signed by an anonymous faculty member, he said.
But Mondragon said the loans do not fully fund the students’ projects.
“All of my teams are not just doing this on the loan,” he said. “All of them have invested some of their own money. Each one of them has contributed X number of dollars to capitalize the company.”
Mondragon said if students fail to pay the loan back at the end of the semester, then they fail the class and the co-signer is left to foot the bill. But he said that during the only other time he taught the class, in spring 2012, students didn’t have a problem paying it back.
UNM students Andrew Moser and Jared Snyder, who are enrolled in Management 557, are revving up BeautifullyUgly, a business they created along with local disc jockey Wiley Seigley.
Moser said his company will serve as a marketing venue for various products. He said he plans to launch the company’s website at an event called the “Anti-Prom,” which will be held on Saturday at 7 p.m. in the SUB Ballrooms, with $5 tickets for students and $10 tickets for nonstudents.
“We’re focusing on art, branded merchandise, music, as a music blog, live events and then we are currently putting together an original graphic literature series,” Moser said. “So we’re trying to make it a full encompassing culture.”
Moser said he first came up with the idea for BeautifullyUgly when he was an undergraduate student.
“It’s either drop dead gorgeous or it’s absolutely horrific, so let’s combine the two and make a new genre,” he said. ”Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we’re here to push the limits of what is beauty and trying to be original. Our logo is B.U. — Be Yourself.”
Moser said the Anti-Prom will count as his final exam for the class.
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“It’s a concert and a mashup, so it’s Top 40 hits over electronic music, there’s going to be a flavor for everybody,” he said. “The Anti-Prom is my final. If it’s a success then I can pay it back.”
Mondragon says the groups in his current class are creating a variety of different businesses, including creating an iPhone app for appointments and reservations, and a sustainability-focused consulting firm. He said this is contrary to last semester, when most of his students had focused mainly on a business in the food service industry.
“Most of them are making good progress,” he said. “I can’t see any one of them that will crash.”
