What made you decide to start your own business?
Matt Mullenweg (23 year old CEO of Automattic) once told me that he started his company because he was “highly unemployable.” I think that’s true of most entrepreneurs. We start companies because we have to. Whenever I have a job, I work myself out of it. For example, Business Honors hired me a while back to update the website (it hadn’t been updated in a long time). Instead of just doing the updates, I built a system that made it so anyone in the Honors office could update it – I worked myself out of a job.

I’ve started a few businesses, and they all came about because I recognized a problem.
• Aesthetic Studios (my web design company in high school) – I worked at a print shop and people would come in needing business cards, brochures…and a website. The print shop didn’t do web, so I learned and had them send the work to me.
• iPod in Car (a website I started in 2002) – I bought an iPod and had a hard time figuring out how to connect it to my car, so I started a website about it. I’d ask people who had done it to write guides, submit pictures, and review products. I really didn’t do any work; everyone else just gave me their content. I sold this site in March 07 to iLounge.com.
• Erickson Media Group – A holding company for all the projects I work on. I also do new media consulting: help businesses use new technologies and the web.

What are you currently working on?
My main project at the moment is Coursevote, a facebook application. It allows you to vote on classes you like/dislike, leave comments, and see what your friends think. I started this because I’ve registered up a few bad classes, and afterwards heard from a bunch of friends, “You shouldn’t have taken that, I took it last year and hated it.” If only I could have known that BEFORE registering.

On Coursevote, you can search for a class and it will tell you what everyone, and just your friends, thought of it. So a MGMT 211 class might have 100 positive votes and 20 negative votes, with 30 of the positives and 5 of the negatives being your friends. It will list your friends and then you can talk to them about that class before taking it.

How did you go about finding other people who are interested in this as well?
I had a hard time finding local entrepreneurs and others interested in what I’m doing. So right before summer, some friends and I started an organization called Refresh BCS for entrepreneurs, designers, developers, photographers, artists, community activists, and anyone else interested. We meet monthly and usually have a speaker on some topic. A few months ago we had about 200 people come to speak with Google. Other great resources:
• Creative Space – a collaborative office we just got. We have the 5th floor of the Varisco Building in Downtown Bryan. We have a group of the local startups and creatives (artists, photographers…) all in one big office environment.
• Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship – I wish I knew about this sooner. Richard Scruggs and everyone else at CNVE are a great resource for any local entrepreneur. If you have an idea for something, go by room 430 Wehner and talk with them.

Any book suggestions for would-be entrepreneurs?
My Start-Up Life by Ben Casnocha – If you think you might want to be an entrepreneur, read this! Ben founded his first company when he was 14; he’s going to be a freshman in Fall 07.
Founders at Work – This is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days.