3 Day Startup explores the journey of student entrepreneurs from all over the world in the ongoing blog series Born in Dorms. Universities are ripe for more innovation: the combination of bright students, open information, and more accessible tech creates an environment where student companies can flourish better than ever before. These highly motivated and driven students share their successes, failures, and everything in between as they navigate the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship in their local communities. Read more about each student’s unique perspective on building a viable company in and around campus.
Nis Frome and the Hublished team from Rutgers University
Nis Frome, a Marketing undergrad at Rutgers University, co-founded Hublished in 2012 with Ben Borodach and Yair Aviner.
Hublished is a discovery platform and social network where brands build followings by sharing expert content in the form of webinars, e-books and podcasts. Dubbed “convention in the cloud,” Hublished allows users to find and purchase various materials from experts in their field.
Frome’s team initially thought of the concept in 2011 and was immediately challenged with raising enough capital to pursue their idea. The following year, team members participated in a business competition class taught by Lawrence Lenihan in hopes to receive $12,500 in funding. Frome says, “Hublished did not win the competition initially, but 9 months later after seeing us progress, he [Lenihan] reversed his decision and awarded us first place.” Frome attributes the startup’s success to this initial capital along with networking opportunities provided by Meetup.com.
Frome stresses networking and escaping the “bubble” and encourages entrepreneurs to share their experiences with relevant communities and publications. He says, “You should be networking with relevant professionals, and you should be learning from customers and competitors. If you’re a technology company, you should be participating in hackathons and tech events.”
Hublished recently reached a milestone, as Rutgers University joined their platform as the first organization to host an upcoming webinar on the site. One of the startup’s ambitious goals for this upcoming year is to disrupt the marketing industry and its traditional advertising practices.
“We want organizations to realize that a value-driven marketing campaign can generate leads and customers without the need to advertise,” Frome says, “So while we want to have a ton of organizations and content on our site, our foremost goal is to have organizations actually generating business through content. If it’s a single webinar that generates leads and customers and causes an organization to stop advertising and instead create content, then we’ve done our job.”
About 3 Day Startup
3 Day Startup (3DS) teaches entrepreneurial skills to university students in an extreme hands-on environment. In addition to supporting budding entrepreneurs, 3DS programs cultivate entrepreneurial communities that contribute to the growth of entrepreneurship ecosystems in the regions surrounding these university programs. This proven program provides students the tools they need to start successful companies. To date, more than 39 companies have come out of 3DS to collectively raise $9.5 million in investor capital and more than a dozen have been accepted to prestigious incubators and accelerators such as Y Combinator and TechStars.
Brought to you by:
MakerSquare is a ten week, in-person, immersive web development training program. You’ll learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, TDD, common APIs, and more. Learn more.
The 3 Day Startup Blog 