CWRU alumni and students' new website CorkShare ready to run on Nov. 2

Case Western Reserve University prides itself on encouraging students to develop innovative ideas and apply creativity to their coursework. However, upon graduation, few of these students act upon the ideas developed throughout the course of their education, choosing instead to focus all their efforts into getting into graduate programs or finding entry-level employment in the workforce. Nevertheless, two CWRU students, Jim England and Tim Gasper, persisted with their idea for a new type of social media and launching their own start-up company.CorkShare began in the summer of 2008 when Tim Gasper, Devesh Menawat, and Jim England attended Startup Weekend Columbus, a unique opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to develop ideas, network, and begin putting ideas into action. On the drive from Cleveland to Columbus, the three students engendered the idea of creating a virtual corkboard with a group-oriented approach. The concept was well received at Startup Week Columbus, and inspired them to develop it further. Thus, CorkShare was born.

The concept behind CorkShare is simple, really: the website allows users to create forums for sharing content such as photos, videos, news stories, etc. The difference between CorkShare and other social media networks like Twitter and Facebook is that corkboard content can be restricted to certain groups. The concept has gained a lot of attention and performed well in a competitive setting. At the Queen's Entrepreneurship Competition, based out of Queen's University in Canada, the CorkShare team came in 16th among teams from all over the world. Now, the CWRU-based company is looking to launch their product to a wider audience, beginning with a CWRU-based launch on November 2nd.

"We wanted to try out the website on a larger scale," England states, "and the Case community is the perfect place to do this. There are so many clubs, student groups, team projects, and other places that our website can benefit, and since there are already groups of friends and co-workers it will be easier for everyone to comment on one another's content and work together."

Making it this far certainly has not been easy, and the CorkShare team, which now consists of seniors Jim England, Huston Hoburg, Kurt Zoeller, and recent graduate Tim Gasper, has faced many challenges along the way. Perhaps the most difficult was the actual programming aspect. "The website has a lot of moveable parts," England explains, and in an effort to keep costs low, England and Hoburg have been responsible for almost all the programming involved. Moreover, the students had to learn many of the basics of entrepreneurship themselves: applying for LLC status, creating a privacy policy, and drafting terms of service. As a social media company, the amount of liability is greater as they cannot control content that users post.

Moreover, England and Gasper found that launching a start-up in Cleveland has been difficult. Gasper explained that the local business environment is a little too traditional for entrepreneurship and not always receptive to new ideas. "But by using our free time in the summer wisely and tapping in some local resources such as Goldstein, Caldwell and Associates, a seed capital investment and business development company that helps young entrepreneurs, we were able to build out most of the website."

Although CorkShare will be officially launched to the CWRU community on Nov. 2nd, the Gasper and England are already role models for local entrepreneurs. Inspired by their success at Startup Weekend Columbus two summers ago, the two are now responsible for encouraging students to test their ideas at Startup Weekend Cleveland (Nov. 20 - 22). "The hardest part is actually acting on the idea," Gasper explains, "but the farther along you are, the more help is available."

Starting Nov. 2 at 9 p.m., CWRU students can sign up for a CorkShare account by visiting http://www.corkshare.com/CWRU. By pitching the idea to the campus community first, the team hopes to open CorkShare up to the public soon. Gasper and England are optimistic, and have faith in their idea. "The whole experience is stressful but fun. It's nice to be your own boss," they explain, "and you learn a lot, regardless of outcome.