Midd Entrepreneurs Create Startups

As a liberal arts college, Middlebury is not the first school that comes to mind when people think of entrepreneurship and young people working with small, start-up companies.

Middlebury may not be Silicon Valley, but that does not mean there are not students right here on our campus doing groundbreaking things in the business realm and making an impact in their industries.

In recent years, with the help of classes like Middlebury Entrepreneurs and MiddCORE, but primarily through their own efforts and determination, several students at the College have founded their own companies.

Corinne Prevot ’13 started her business four years ago as a high school junior at the Burke Mountain Academy, a boarding school in northeast Vermont with a focus on skiing.

Over one rainy winter break, she and her mother went out to buy materials to make hats, headbands and other accessories for ski races.

“I’ve always been very crafty,” said Prevot. “Some people like music; I dabble on the sewing machine.”

Prevot’s quality products and unique designs soon gained popularity. She began selling custom orders to friends, teammates and competitors at ski races and eventually sold some to her first retail buyer, East Burke Sports, a local ski shop. Prevot named her new company Skida, after the Swedish word meaning “to ski.”

Since then, Skida products have expanded to 80 locations across the country. In 2011, Prevot was awarded the prestigious title of an All-Star Student Entrepreneur by Forbes when her revenues hit the $100,000 mark. This spring, Vermont Life Magazine featured Skida as a “fabric of Vermont.”

As a full-time student running her own business with nothing but the help of her mother and some hired seamstresses in northeastern Vermont, Prevot still manages a regular course load along with a 20-hour work week. However, Prevot looks forward to the prospect of devoting more of her time to Skida once she graduates this spring.

She plans to increase her product line and add in some style pieces, as well as expand on Skida’s philanthropic project, Skida Plus One, where online buyers can donate a hat to one of four cancer centers in Vermont or Colorado at their time of purchase. But no matter where Prevot takes Skida next, she maintains that it is her goal to keep all production domestic.

Prevot’s advice to other entrepreneurs is simply to “be patient with it.”

“Let it grow organically,” said Prevot. She believes that entrepreneurship derived from passion is best when left to take its own path.

Rocket Listings is another small start-up company that were founded by Middlebury students.

The summer after taking MiddCORE during his first winter term, Brian Sirkia ’12.5 had the idea of helping spring semester students rent out their things to language school students.

Over the next few years, Sirkia collaborated with mentors and co-founder Nat Kelner ’12.5 to take this initiative even further by establishing Rocket Listings, a website designed to make buying and selling items online easier and faster. Rocket Listings also allows customers to cross-list postings with similar sites, like Craigslist.

“What brought me to Middlebury was the appeal of the liberal arts and their intersection with technology, and that same appeal is what brought me to Rocket Listings,” said Teddy Knox ’15, chief technology officer and co-founder of the company.

Although Sirkia and Kelner received money through the College’s Millennium Fund, they expressed that raising funds and contacting potential investors has been one of the most challenging aspects of running their small business.

Their hope is to stay based in Burlington where they currently have an office on Church Street, but they recognize that relocating is a real possibility. Still, the two feel that the move would be well worth staying with the company and pursuing their dream jobs.

“You’ve got to be willing to take risks and jump into the deep-end,” said Kelner.

He admits that Rocket Listings has not been a simple endeavor, but that college is the time to take such chances, when most of us do not have to worry about putting food on the table or taking care of a family.

“It’s all an attitude,” said Sirkia when talking about what he learned from his entrepreneurial endeavors.