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Black-light posters featuring mushrooms and trance-inducingswirls were absent in Graham Weihmiller's dorm room at theCollege of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. "Therewasn't a Web site for those things [yet]," says the24-year-old who co-founded Manhattan's DormNow.com Inc. withcollege buddy Neal Batra, 24, in August 1998-about a year afterturning the tassel. Instead, Weihmiller "got a lot of usedfurniture and went about college existence."
But it wasn't regretful memories of a blah dorm room thatspawned the idea for DormNow.com-corporate umbrella over TheDormStore.com (where students canbuy furnishings, decorating accessories, gifts and electronics withno shipping charges) and StudentAuction.com (where attendeesof like schools can bid on each other's futons and bean bags).It was more of a "see a niche and fill it" situation.
Weihmiller, who worked in the technology sales equity group forMerrill Lynch on Wall Street after graduation, ran a moving companywith some friends in school and dabbled in independent techconsulting. But witnessing daily business-to-consumer Internetsuccesses and realizing the buying power of the college marketsparked a yearning in Weihmiller to be involved. Not "anIndiana Jones-type person," he made a well-prepared leap offaith, armed with personal savings and seed funding from two angelinvestors-a friend and a former professor.
At start-up, DormNow.com wasthree people making phone calls en masse out of Weihmiller'sUpper East Side apartment bedroom. "The echo was one of thebiggest challenges," he says. Now 50 employees strong, withpending partnerships and investments, DormNow.com hopes to reach abroader market.
The sad part of expansion? DormNow.com's last office sporteda dorm-room setup, but "that gave way to more desks,unfortunately," says Weihmiller. "We've fallen preyto the corporate environment-but maybe we'll set up anotherone."
