Entrepreneurial spirit is budding on campuses

In between classes, working out at the gym and volunteering as a reserve police officer, Lance Larson spent five to six hours each night on his Web hosting business in his college dorm room.

He started the business with money out of his own pocket — $10,000 in savings from high school computer repair and paper delivery jobs — and refused to accept any outside funding offers.

Now, Larson says OC Hosting Inc. serves 3,500 clients and generates revenues of $1 million a year.

"I knew one day it would pay off, and sure enough it is," said Larson, who graduated from San Diego State University this spring with a degree in information systems. He plans on getting a master's degree in homeland security as he continues to operate OC Hosting.

Today's college students are well aware of the dot-com busts of the late 1990s. But they are still eager as ever to take a stab at entrepreneurship — if not for the potential riches made by billionaires like Michael Dell or Bill Gates, then for the satisfaction of self-employment and invaluable business experience.

Though mixing academics with business can be tricky, college may actually be the ideal time to pursue entrepreneurship. Because students are often free from "real-world" concerns like finding a job or buying a house, many say they are able to take greater risks and spend more time developing a business.

"School work is not nine to five — you can kind of push it around," said Anthony Casalena, a senior at the University of Maryland and owner of a Web publishing service, Squarespace.com.

Tometria Bean, a 23-year-old single mother and student at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, said a busy schedule did not stop her from establishing her own entertainment agency.

"It all comes down to time management," Bean said. "People that know me know I live by a calendar."

Bean, who plans on pursuing her business after she graduates next year, said she's spending 60 hours a week running the agency this summer.

Nobody knows exactly how many college entrepreneurs are out there, but anecdotal evidence shows their numbers are growing, said Gerry Hills, director of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization, which Hills founded five years ago, has grown into a network of 120 chapters and 14,000 members nationwide.