Some William Woods Masters of Business students quickly find entrepreneurial success after graduating from the graduate degree program at The Woods. Some even find it while still students at WWU.
Then there is the duo of Jordan Williams and Julian Taylor. One an alumnus of the WWU MBA program and the other a current student, the two teamed up recently to found an E-commerce loyalty start-up venture called Veeper. Both natives of England, the two MBA-Entrepreneurship students were able to fund their start-up when they recently secured a $20,000 investment from Dorm Room Fund.
The new venture started when Williams had a $200 Southwest Airlines voucher and 6000+ Chipotle restaurant points expire over the course of the pandemic. To solve the problem of expiring points and vouchers, Williams and Taylor created Veeper, which in an app that integrates with online stores and rewards customers with automatic incremental discounts that never expire.
Williams and Taylor both paid homage to the William Woods MBA program that they say helped prepare them for the challenges they experienced in the early stages of starting their company.
“It is best to be honest about what you are providing,” Williams said. “When pitching to store owners and potential investors, it is important that we do not oversell ourselves and be very clear about what problem we are solving. Having a lot of features does not always equate to more success.”
Presenting new ideas as part of their class projects to their peers and professors helped prepare them for when they had to present to investors.
“The capstone project where we had to create a business plan for a small business helped when it came time for us to make financial projections and forecasts for Veeper,” Taylor said.
One of Williams’ professors impressed with the Veeper idea was Thomas Trice, MBA Program Manager & Associate Professor School of Business and Technology.
“Jordan [Williams] and Julian [Taylor] are shining examples of the excellence related to our student’s entrepreneurial spirit in the MBA Program,” Trice said.
Working hard in the classroom paid off, as Williams and Taylor were able to secure funding from Dorm Room Fund. The Dorm Room Fund is a subsidiary company of First Round Capital and is widely recognized as the leading student-led venture capital investment firm in the world. Dorm Room Fund provides founders with a strong network of investors, world-class mentors, and a $20,000 check.
“Being part of the Dorm Room Fund family will help us greatly. The $20,000 will be great for us in the short term,” Williams said. “The access to the Dorm Room Fund partners and advisors, and doors they can help us open, will be far more valuable than the money in the long term.”
The next goal for Williams and Taylor is to raise additional funding and to launch the Veeper app on Shopify. They are always looking for online stores to partner with Veeper. If you or someone you know owns an online store, reach out to them at [email protected] or visit their website www.veeperapp.com.
Due to their WWU education and their own entrepreneurial spirit, Williams and Taylor were able to start Veeper and secure funding for it. They serve as an example of how WWU students take what they learn from the classroom and successfully use it in the real world.
For more on the William Woods MBA program, visit https://www.williamwoods.edu/academics/graduate/business_graduate/mba.html
