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For students thinking about starting their own business or being their own boss, the Entrepreneurship Fair at the University of Maine was the place to be on Thursday.
The fair was sponsored by a number of companies from around Maine, the UMaine’s Target Technology Incubator, Student Government and the Office of Research and Economic Development.
Besides browsing among the booths that filled the upstairs of Wells Commons, attendants could also sit in on a panel presentation every hour about entrepreneurship. The panel was composed of several entrepreneurs, both students and professionals, a university instructor, and Debbie Neuman, director of the Target Incubator, speaking about entrepreneurship at the state level.
“It’s really perfectly normal not to know what you’re doing,” Neuman told the audience at one panel discussion. “Don’t be embarrassed to come in and say, ‘I don’t have a clue about this,’ because you’re not supposed to.”
Sitting on the panel as student entrepreneurs were Ph.D. students Soren Hansen and Chad Callan, who have started a business within the university called Sea and Reef Aquaculture, a company exploring breeding tropical fish in captivity for purchase at a pet store. According to Hansen, 95 percent of all the fish in pet stores come straight from the reefs and are taken in by some methods that end up killing a lot of fish.
“Every time you see a fish at the store, probably eight to 10 other fish had to die to get it,” Hansen said of the millions of fish that are brought into stores every year.
“Chad and I both share long years of keeping an aquarium,” Hansen said. “We want to raise these fish in captivity [and] that’s where our research comes in.”
“Basically the idea was to do the research necessary to grow these fish in captivity, but also to start our own business,” Callan said. “Also, neither of us know anything about business. In total, we’ve taken one business class and that was last fall. We’re two biologists trying to start a business.”
Callan and Hansen were quick to point out that starting and running their own business has been challenging. Callan described being a student, starting a company and doing the research necessary to run it as three full-time jobs.
“If I could emphasize one thing, it’s that it’s not easy,” Callan said. “There are two of us, so it makes it a little bit easier. It’s seven days a week, it’s holidays, spring break, summer – it never stops.”
“Raising these fish is extremely time-consuming,” Soren said. “We’ve been extremely fortunate with the resources we do have.”
Callan and Hansen credit much of the help they have received in their business venture to the university and the Target Technology Incubator.
“Basically we have a company existing within the university and it’s a very interesting relationship,” Callan said, adding that Sea and Reef Aquaculture often trades fish and eggs to the university for space to run their business and research.
“There’s money available to test out an idea and see if it works,” Callan told the audience, saying that organizations like the Maine Technology Institute provide seed grants to research laboratories and private companies that don’t need to be repaid like loans do.
“The main thing you need to be an entrepreneur and start your own business is the desire to. There’s a whole lot of people in the business industry who never went to college – it all comes down to the desire to work for yourself,” UMaine professor Steve Adam said during the panel discussion. “We’re becoming a small business country. The days of the companies who hire 25,000 people are winding down.”
Adam, who teaches a small business management class, said UMaine has recently become interested in supporting entrepreneurs and now offers many valuable courses for aspiring entrepreneurs.
“There are all kinds of resources available. The one thing we cannot supply is the desire,” Adam said.
Entrepreneur Rick Briggs agreed.
“You have to find something you love and then you’ll be successful,” he said.
Briggs, who started Blue Hill Pyrotechnics, a fireworks company, also advised aspiring and veteran entrepreneurs to use the press to their advantage. Citing personal experience, Briggs said every year around the Fourth of July he gives interviews about fireworks and firework safety to various media agencies.
“You can’t buy advertisements like that,” he said, adding that sending out press releases is another good way to use the media. Often, instead of paying for an advertisement, a story will result from a press release, Briggs said.
“Use the media; use the newspapers to your advantage,” Briggs said. “It took me a while to learn this but when times are bad, the last thing you should cut is your advertising budget.”
Besides offering insight from the panel discussions, the Entrepreneurship Fair featured a variety of booths with information about various companies aimed at entrepreneurship around Maine, including the Maine International Trade Center, Intelligent Spatial Technologies, Eastern Maine Development Corporation, the Maine Patent Program and Maine Technology Institute, among others.
Bangor Daily News