Office of Undergraduate Education

Recently Business Week compiled a list of America’s brightest and youngest entrepreneurs, many of whom have made millions before the age of twenty-five.  One highlighted young businessman was Duke alumnus Dylan Smith, T ‘07, an economics-major from Seattle with a penchant for taking calculated risks. Smith left the West Coast for Duke University expecting to be pre-med.  By his sophomore year, however, Smith had changed his sights to business and had begun raking in winnings from online poker tournaments.  At this point, Smith’s childhood friend Aaron Levie contacted him about an online venture in data storage solutions.  With an investment of $11,000 of Smith’s poker winnings, the young Blue Devil and his buddy at USC founded Box.net, an online collaboration tool now used by more than 50,000 companies worldwide.

You can read more about Box.net and its CFO Dylan Smith in this Seattle Times article.

After graduating from Duke in 2007, Rachel Weeks went to Sri Lanka on a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue her interest in ethical fashion, a subject she explored in her Women’s Studies senior honors thesis, “The Wonder Bra: Theorizing Globalization, Women’s Labor, and Consumption for Twenty-First Century Feminism,” a study of the intersections between fashion and academic feminism. But her interest in the topic wasn’t just academic…  You can listen to Rachel recount her own story in a recent radio interview on “The Story with Dick Gordon.” You can also read Rachel’s own words in this month’s Duke Women’s Studies newsletter.

Ever wonder how to get out of a speeding ticket?  Or fix a leaky faucet?  Or start your own online business after graduating from Duke?  Recently in a front-page article in the business section, the New York Times explained how Duke grad, Jason Liebman, T ‘97, is helping people answer these questions and more via his internet start-up, Howcast.com, a site where you can find tutorial videos.  After graduating with a degree in Political Science, Liebman followed the path of many Duke alums from Durham to Wall Street, where he spent time as an investment banker.  As the 90’s internet boom progressed, Liebman’s entrepreneurial spirit sent him seeking dot.com prospects in California. He went on to land at Google.    While there, he and several co-workers noticed the high traffic of “how-to” videos on Youtube as well as their lack of quality and consistency.  From that, they hatched the idea for “Howcast.com,” a website that provided professionally made videos answering online queries.  With support from web moguls at the likes of MySpace and AOL, and not to mention press kudos from the New York Times and Time Magazine, Howcast seems poised to become an internet sensation.