Startup Chatter by Donna Bogatin

 Poor college students? Not for long, if NYU Stern Incubator graduate CollegeHotList.com has its wish!

Before an entrepreneurial audience of New York University Stern School of Business (my MBA alma matter) alumni last evening, student team member Beth Pollack shared tales of undergraduate frustration with “how difficult it was to plan a gathering of college friends.”

After all, “deciding what to do, where to go and how to get the word out was too time consuming, especially for busy students.” CollegeHotList to the rescue of college students’ “social lives,” soon! 

Pollack and fellow 2007 NYU Stern business plan competition winners identified another big college student problem they intend to solve as well: Facebook, the “sell out.”

CollegeHotList is emphatic about “bringing exclusivity back to college socializing“:

College-exclusive. No teachers, employers or parents. Ever. We won’t sell out like They did.

“They,” as in Mark Zuckerberg’s once online .edu playground that has since become an open door pasture for all (old) ages!

CollegeHotList has been brewing a Faceboook asaault for two years and now hopes to unleash the first salvo of a calculated, multi-year plan to displace Facebook on campuses, thanks to none other than Facebook!

CollegeHotList was not an immediate viral hit its first two go-arounds: Traction was “modest, with just a handful of members.” Since taking first place honors at last year’s Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies’ business plan faceoff, however, the youthful team’s confidence has grown exponentially.

CollegeHotList is currently self-funded, big time, and has a detailed multi-year national roll out schedule, starting with a controlled beta test for two New York City campuses: NYU and Columbia University.

With a staff of about thirty and a monthly PR retainer fee, CollegeHotList now runs at a $100,000 monthly burn rate; Internal financial projections call for breakeven after three years. CollegeHotList’s targeted revenue streams are standard: Banner advertising and listings upgrades. The team claims $220,000 in pre-booked advertising, while acknowledging current “immature” CPM levels.

Pollack and team are as sure of their future ability to make money as they are of their projected success in garnering massive viral traffic and traction, all at the expense of college social networking king, Facebook! CollegeHotList will have a love-hate relationship with Facebook, however. The new site’s self-projected victory over Facebook is based upon a business model reliance upon the very same Facebook.

Pollack is certain CollegeHotList will succeed in trumping Facebook because it promises low “switching costs.” CollegeHotList hopes to spur all college students to switch the Facebook data “they own” over to a new, better home at CollegeHotList.

I spoke with the CollegeHotList team about Mark Zuckerberg’s determination to maintain all the world’s college students’ personal data and interactions within his own Facebook platform. CollegeHotList maintains, however, that it has the legal and technological leverage to fuel mass Facebooker migration of Facebook account data over to CollegeHotList.

CollegeHotList’s user login system uses Facebook’s user login system: Despite needing Facebook to beat Facebook, CollegeHotList declares its product is nothing like Facebook, or any of the other legions of social networks courting the college scene.

Nevertheless, CollegeHotList features are indeed Facebook-like, and like those of many other social networks.  

Tired of Facebook poking? How about College HotList “flirts”? Want to know what is “hot or not,” rate videos, products clubs and more, with CollegeHotList!

The CollegeHotList team itself is not giving up their own Facebook accounts. Pollack cited survey research of 200 college students to back up their assertions of student desire for social networking change. I asked CollegeHotList if they took advantage of Facebook’s very own Facebook Polls to “survey” such students.

YES, CollegeHotLIst used Facebook to gain access to college students actively using Facebook to determine, who needs Facebook?

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