BusinessTN

For most college students, the four years (or more) after high school are a time to discover themselves and figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives. However, for a rare few, it is a time to further define a career path they have long been following. Michael Jordan went to Chapel Hill to work on his outside jumper, and Andy Tabar, a Cleveland, Ohio, native, went south to Nashville's Belmont University to improve his Web site, Bizooki. Recently, the twenty-one-year-old Belmont senior and his brainchild were included on StartupNation's inaugural list of the top twenty dorm-based entrepreneurs.

Slots on the list were awarded based on a wide range of criteria, including innovation of business concept, potential for growth, cutting-edge business practices, demonstration of business fundamentals, degree of talent exhibited by founder, potential for overall impact, and financial performance. StartupNation placed the Belmont senior and Bizooki atop its "Huge Upside Potential" group.

Bizooki is a global networking site dedicated to helping companies utilize global talent in the fields of IT, design and strategy. It is an idea that has been brewing in Tabar's mind from the early age of eleven, when he first began making Web sites. By the time he was fourteen, Tabar had picked up some business from coffeehouses and musicians. For the rest of the decade, the Web site that would later become Bizooki gained around fifty clients, ranging from mom-and-pop shops to publicly traded companies.

When it came time for the Web whiz to pick a college, he thought that Belmont's Entrepreneur Program would best nurture his growing business plans. Tabar has not regretted his decision. "Belmont has helped put Bizooki on the fast track," he says. "Often, I go straight from class to my office and implement what I've just learned in class to the site."

Tabar isn't the only one who thinks highly of Belmont's program. Entrepreneur magazine included Belmont in its top twenty-five college entrepreneurship programs. In addition, the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship named Belmont a national undergraduate model program. In only the program's fifth year, Belmont is the thirteenth school in the past twenty-five years to receive this honor from the USASBE.

Jeff Cornwall, the director of the Entrepreneur Program, is proud of his prized pupil, considering Tabar an ideal student with whom to work. "He came to Belmont with his business in hand," Cornwall says, "and we helped him grow and refine it into something he can take with him after he graduates." Bizooki should occupy Andy Tabar's time and mind long after graduation, as he has big plans for the site involving the outsourcing of work in the legal and accounting fields. "Huge upside potential" indeed.