CampusLIVE Creators Revamp Web site

The Daily Collegian - 9/11/07

For one University of Massachusetts student, not getting into the Isenberg School of Management fueled him to start his own national-based Web development company.

Jared Stenquist, the CEO of CampusLIVE, Inc. started work on his Website, then called zoomasslinks.com, during his sophomore year in 2005 to help accommodate the growing need for a central online access point for students.

"I realized everything college students were looking for wasn't readily available for them on a Web page," Stenquist said.

To make the Web site known, Stenquist said he and some friends posted banners on campus. Despite these signs, he said there was mostly verbal advertising, estimating over 95 percent of site users come from word-of-mouth referrals.

"In 2006, I started to see the site was taking off. We had over half of UMass using it daily. I decided to spread out and try it at other schools as well."

When Stenquist started expanding to other New England universities, he got an unfavorable reaction, mostly about using the school names as part of the domain name. At this point he found a single "brand" to put different university sites under: CampusLIVE.

Currently, with nearly 75 percent of the UMass campus using the site, Stenquist said CampusLIVE will be expanding to 20 schools as far away as Florida, Arizona and Colorado.

"We're going to be expanding from those 20…after more success," he said.

Busy running CampusLIVE, Stenquist decided to disenroll at UMass to focus instead on developing and updating his business.

"I left UMass to start a Web development company…because I couldn't get into the business school. I'm hoping after this they will let me in."

Currently based in Hadley, Stenquist owns the business with two other UMass students: Vice President of Marketing Jeff Caffidy, a graduate from ISOM, and Chief Technical Officer Boris Rezin, an enrolled senior.

Working full time, the CampusLIVE staff is planning to launch a new version of the site this Friday.

"This new version really allows [students] to customize everything. It's really their site; it's not what we're deciding they should see."

The new version, which took over a year to complete, will keep all of the features CampusLIVE has become known for, while also adding listings and reviews for all area restaurants and an option to completely customize the page.

Even with the national expansion, Stenquist said the company's main focus is supporting college students.

"We're trying to give them the best possible site. We're trying to be transparent - not a giant company trying to get what they want from students."