How I Got My Start in Entrepreneurship

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When I attended Dartmouth College for undergrad, I was exposed to a lot of entrepreneurship and it changed my life.

Here's the story of how I got my start in entrepreneurship and how it's going now:

My freshman year of college I purchased equity in a student-run business called Gratefull Bed. This company rents out full-size mattresses to students so they don't have to sleep on a cramped twin xl dorm mattress.

(click that link to check out their website)

Surprisingly, there were four student-run companies at Dartmouth that offered that same exact service. Kinda wild.

After contributing to the growth of Gratefull Bed, I sold my 10% equity stake to some underclassmen to continue the trend of passing down the company within the Dartmouth student body.

That's when I caught the entrepreneurial bug. I made a few thousand bucks on the equity sale and earned quarterly dividends throughout my ownership.

Getting a paycheck for being an owner is an incredible feeling.

So now I'm hooked and I'm brainstorming another company I can launch at school. I looked at services that were offered at other schools but not at Dartmouth. I ended up launching Greenbox Storage, a summer storage / shipping service for college students.

I remember calling my father in the basement of my dorm building with my idea. He loved it. I whipped up a website and I was off to the races.

I had a successful first few months and then COVID hit and drove Greenbox into high gear. We were able to capitalize on the increased demand for storage throughout the pandemic.

Fast forward to fall 2021, I attended Bentley University for a master's degree in finance and I launched another branch.

In spring 2022, my friend and partner, Aaron Partridge, invested $100,000 in exchange for a 20% equity stake in the company. We both had big plans for the future.

We also added a few other schools for the 2022 season for a total of six branches. I graduated college in the summer of 2022 and finally got to work on Greenbox full time! In 2023, we went into overdrive.

We tripled our branch presence from six to 18 schools, hired 35 student employees and 3 full time employees.

Things are getting really crazy in 2024. We’re targeting a 200% YoY revenue increase this year. $1,500,000 is our goal and as of this writing, were are perfectly on track to hit it.

Revenues:

2020: $41,000

2021: $56,000

2022: $270,000

2023: $518,000

2024 (target): $1,500,000

I post about our progress on Twitter and LinkedIn just about every day. Feel free to give me a follow if you’re interested in watching our progress!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. The Startup Toolkit: This comprehensive course provides you step-by-step directions for how to launch and grow your startup. Through trial and error, I’ve developed these methods to grow my startup to $518,201 annual revenue.

2. 1-on-1 Startup Consulting: Serious about launching / growing your startup? Get the personalized help you need.

3. Promote your business to 850+ subscribers by sponsoring my newsletter.

Cheers,

Collin Rutherford

PS. Your prescription is ready.