IU alumnus starts ULife.com

A Web site aimed at the desires of college students was recently launched by an IU alumnus. \nAndrew Clark, who graduated in 2001, is the co-founder and vice president of ULife.com, a Web site catering to the wants and needs of college students. Clark will be spending the next month in an RV promoting the site.\n"B-Town is heaven," Clark said, referring to Bloomington. "But we've been touring the hottest spring break spots to promote the site."\nThe road to RV life began for Clark in 2002, when he met ULife.com's co-founder and CEO, Barrett Masso. \n"I graduated from the world-famous Kelley School of Business," Clark said, "and then I met B.J. (Masso) through a mutual friend. We just starting working on things and now I get paid to travel the country and visit college campuses. Tonight we're promoting at a wet T-shirt contest at the Club La Vela."\nMasso, a junior at Arizona State University, had gotten the idea for the site during his freshman year after his laundry delivery service proved unprofitable.\n"The delivery service was running well until it was time to expand," Masso said. "Then I realized that with all the success of the dot-coms, there was a huge untapped market with the college community."\nULife, short for University Lifestyle, combines chat, e-mail, news, dating, book trading and talent exposure with an assortment of college-oriented user tools, such as "Resume Builder" and "Professor Selector." The site is aimed at a large pool of college students.\n"Our goal is to create the largest student community in the world," Clark said. "If you take all the students in the country with all their creativity, you can create anything."\nAlong with student users, Masso envisions a Web site maintained exclusively by collegiate staffers. \n"The goal behind the company was to be not just for college students, but also run by college students," Masso said. "Whether it's sales or advertising or building the site, I want every employee there to be a college student."\nTo that end, the pair is offering jobs for sales representatives during the summer for any interested students. \nThe talent search portion of the Web site has Masso enthused about its possibilities. \n"I'm really excited about the talent exposure," he said. "If you're a musician, model, actor, writer or anything, we're trying to expose your talent instead of hiding you in the shadows."\nAnother promising section of the site is the "UTrade" page -- a buying and selling forum for textbooks, among other things. \n"The buying and selling tool is great," Masso said. "I remember how many kids there were at ASU who would complain about how difficult it was to buy books on a limited budget. This makes it easy to buy and sell books from other students on your own campus."\nThe two entrepreneurs have run the gamut while creating this business, from initial brainstorming to presentations for investors. Masso said his decision to drop the laundry business and enter the world of Web hosting was a wise one.\n"I couldn't have made a better decision," Masso said. "We've had our frustrations, the hidden potholes. But this has been a great experience." \n-- Contact staff writer Rick Newkirk at renewkir@indiana.edu.