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What is the most important lesson you’ve learned from starting your business?

“The most important lesson I’ve learned is to not think about the possible rewards when trying to start a business. Being a dreamer is not a bad thing, but only hard work will allow you to reach your goals.”

You’re an LSU student in Biology 1001. For whatever reason, you missed class today. You swear the professor is going to have something from the lecture on an upcoming test. Even though there are more than 100 students in the class, you don’t know anyone. How can you receive a copy of the notes you missed?

Or you’re registering for the upcoming semester. You’re taking English 1001, but there are more than 100 sections of the class and seemingly as many teachers. You heard Professor Jones is tough. Or is it Professor Smith who’s tough? How can you find out which instructor is right for you?

That’s where EverythingLSU.com comes in. The Web site is the brainchild of Josh Duke, a senior who has asked those questions of himself and is relying on fellow students to provide the answers.

“I’m usually the guy other people go to for notes,” he says. “I’m sure a large percentage of students miss class or go to class and don’t understand something that was discussed. This will be the place to go if you have a question.

“People always have a question, but they don’t always feel comfortable asking them. It’s taken me a few years to learn that students want to help out other students. You just have to meet students or communicate with students.”

Duke, who will graduate in construction management in December and business management in May, is not aware of a similar site at another school. That means he started with a blank page regarding EverythingLSU.com instead of imitating the best ideas from other sources.

The purple-and-gold Beta version—the site goes live in August—includes a message board, course ratings and teacher ratings along with information on bars, movies and restaurants. The message board was not part of the original site plan; that idea came to Duke one night in a light-bulb moment. It would’ve been especially handy last semester when he and some of his classmates received a 500-question study guide for an upcoming test.

The board includes alphabetized links to every academic department—from Accounting to Women’s and Gender Studies. He downloaded an Excel spreadsheet of classes that was originally 8,800 pages and edited it to 3,200 pages—and that’s just the list for the fall semester.

“The biggest challenge has been the research,” Duke says. “It’s just time-consuming because of the number of professors and the number of classes. It’s just ridiculous.”

The lack of initial revenue didn’t deter Duke from creating EverythingLSU.com. If he goes all out on marketing, he expects the site to grow in popularity. And once he has some traffic numbers, he can approach potential advertisers with those figures.

The site hasn’t cost him any money—“I haven’t spent a penny,” he says—and the only expenses would occur if the site becomes so popular it exceeds the bandwidth.

“I love business, and I wanted to get a business going on the Internet,” Duke says. “This is a four-year-long hobby. This is something that I love. You don’t need an obnoxious amount of money to start a business on the Internet. You don’t need brick and mortar. You just need the knowledge. It’s not easy, but it’s also not that complicated.”

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