Black Market Entrepreneurship

NCSSM
It's difficult to explain, but the North Carolina School of Science and Math changed me.  Yes, I learned some physics and chemistry and even history and economics while I was there.  Yes, I made good friends, who remain some of my best friends today.  Yes, I had fun and grew up a little bit, though some debate the last point. But none of that is what I mean.

The best explanation  may be that it raised the bar.  I've joked that, if there is a ladder leaning against a wall on the NCSSM campus, then the students know who can climb the ladder the fastest, the best, with one hand, using liquid nitrogen and while holding his breath.  We knew who the best programmers were, the best bridge players, the best mathematicians, the best writers, the best athletes, and yes even the best dancers and kissers.  The atmosphere when you take 400 (now 650) intensely competitive, intensely smart, intensely adolescent students, and put them on one campus at one time is, well, intense.  And that might win this year's NCSSM award for the Understatement of the Year.  If it doesn't win--well, let's just say the NCSSM students will know where it placed.

It has continued after I left.  My best friends are my NCSSM friends and, in a friendly, extremely supportive way, we have continued to be aware of the success of our classmates, and we desperately want to fit in with this elite group.  (The amazing thing is that fitting in is automatic.  There is no hurdle to overcome other than the shared experience.)

My First (Entrepreneurial) Experience
My first experience in entrepreneurship came at NCSSM.  One of my best friends and I had figured out how to get 16 oz glass bottles of Coke (for him) and Pepsi (for me) to the exact temperature in our dormatory refrigerators such that, when you popped the top, the soda froze into a perfect icee.  (We all know that the pressure-volume freezing curve for water is inverted, right?  Ice floats.)  Well, after a hot couple hours of frisbee football, good ole' Wyche dorm could empty two dorm fridges in a few attoseconds (that's a joke--water takes longer than that to freeze) and leave my bank account empty.  Not to mention the long walk down Broad Street with two broomsticks laden with 128 16 oz bottles of Pepsi and Coke, carried like a stretcher between two poor and tired high school students.  You do the math--it was HEAVY!

So, we began charging 50 cents each, and our friends gladly paid it, because the 12 oz cans that didn't freeze were 55 cents from the vending machine. We did it on the honor system, put up a sign and left our dorm rooms unlocked.  It became quite a business, and kept me in pizzas and money for the movies and the arcade.  Trey and I sometimes had to make the trip up Broad twice a week, so we got a bit buff, as well.  Not only that, but our dorm mates loved us because we were improving their lives--self freezing Pepsis after a hot wrestling workout rather than barely tepid cans with 4 oz less that cost a nickel more.

Then the hammer hit.

I think we called him Bloodsucker.  His name may have been Youngblood.  He had some important position at the School, like Chancelor, or President, or maybe Dictator.  (In hindsight, I'm sure he was good and cared for us and was just doing his job--but that's not how we saw it at the time.)

Let's just say that after many very serious conversations in which it was explained that the School had exclusive contracts with vending companies and as students, we were forbidden to have jobs, and couldn't let our enterprises get in the way of our schoolwork...after many of these conversations it was determined that I could stay at NCSSM, but only if I promised never to sell another Pepsi. 

And that is how my self-freezing 16 oz Pepsi business hit the black market.  Picture people coming to my dorm room after curfew, locking the door, and then leaving with a Pepsi wrapped in a bundle of gym clothes.  No really, it's true!

I now serve on the NCSSM Foundation Board.  While on the Board, I've learned that alumni of the School are about 50% as likely as a normal NC high school graduate to start their own business.  This, while some very successful companies have been formed around the grey matter of NCSSM alumni (Red Had, WebTV, Motricity), and a bunch that are still maturing (including one I founded which, while small, has won a few world championships including Formula 1 and Olympic hockey--see http://www.innegrity.com/).

So, how to solve this very important problem?  Dunno.  But in a couple weeks, we'll be launching a contest which, if we are lucky, will help us find a good, scrappy young entrepreneur at the School, and I and a few other alumni will help build a company around him or her.  And then we'll hold another contest, and another, and another.  And we'll all know who won, if a company was formed, and how well they've done, and we'll all support them, love them for what they are doing and be very proud to be included in the same group of folks.