Mark Tressler is asleep. It’s well past midnight, and his windowless basement bedroom is pitch black. Outside the house he rents with five other students, no sounds or sirens are howling on nearby Fifth Avenue.
Suddenly, Tressler bolts upright. He flicks on the lamp beside him, pulls a note card off his nightstand, and scribbles down a few words. Then he falls back to sleep. The business major keeps the stack of note cards by his bed just in case he awakens with an idea. His bedroom floor is littered with scraps of paper from other interrupted nights.
Amid the mess, a plan is forming. It’s nurtured by a book he’s reading: The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, in which the author describes the digital revolution as creating a world of instant interaction.
Tressler wanted to act quickly on his idea, but more nights pass. “I couldn’t sleep … as I thought of this.” So he pulled an all-nighter, working on a business plan fed by his doodling. Fortunately, it was June, and the academic pressure was off.
Tressler envisions an online marketplace. His plan is to form a Web site that would bring regional service providers and customers together. “You can find anything on Google,” he explains, “but sometimes it’s not easy to find someone local, like a hairstylist.” His idea, he says, is similar to eBay, except that eBay is about trading goods, whereas his Web site would focus on exchanging services.
For example, if a student wants to get her hair done for a fraternity formal, she can post a request on the site. Local hair stylists—automatically alerted to the request—would bid for the appointment by listing their prices, locations, and perhaps describing their experience.
The hastily written plan attracted interest on campus. “I was talking with pretty much anyone I knew about it,” he says. He showed the plan to his friend Will Lutz, an economics major, “He was like, ‘I don’t care what my role is, I want to be involved.’” Friends Geoff Misek, an electrical and computer engineering major, and Breck Fresen, a computer science major, also wanted to be involved. Together, they worked on the plan. Mymave.com went live earlier this year. Strapped for time, Tressler says they conduct business meetings about the site while running; all four run for the cross-country team at Carnegie Mellon.
While it’s too early to predict the longevity of mymave.com, it seems that Tressler’s restless nights were worth it. “Honestly, this site could crash tomorrow and I would do it again in a second,” he says. “When I graduate [next spring], I’m either going to keep going with this or start my own company.”
