Darren Herman

My friend and fellow dodgeball teammate, Charlie O’Donnell, is blazing new trails with his new venture, Path101. If you’re part of the digital media scene here in New York, you probably know what he’s up to, but if not, here’s a little snippet: helping students figure out jobs, careers, and internships.

Charlie’s company is very early stage as they are a few guys, a bit of a product (it’s on it’s way) and an open idea. Yes, an open idea. Charlie has put his entire presentation online for all to see: potential investors, entrepreneurs, competition, etc. Bold move, but in a transparent world, could be a very smart move.

Since they are bootstrapping the company until they raise a bit of money, they are pondering going the sponsorship route. Just like Ryan Dahlstrom pondered being a sponsored professional student, Path101 is looking to potentially take some sponsorship money or donations for exchange of services. Example: Path101 needs a new logo, so they are looking for a company (or person) to come in and either donate it or sponsor it. Per Charlies blog, the sponsoring company will receive: Maybe we’ll decorate our company blogs with logos of other companies and say “Logo provided by generous sponsorship by Scion” or something like that?

A few things from the brands perspective:

• What sort of reach does Path101 have?
• Who is their target audience and is it the same as mine?
• How do I measure ROI?
• In exchange for sponsoring, can we take an equity stake?

Interesting concept. I’m sure they aren’t the first per se, but I haven’t seen any companies do anything as similar as they are. Will it take off? I don’t know, but it’s interesting enough to keep my eye on. As an entrepreneur in very early stage companies, every dollar counts and if you can defer cost, could end up helping you out in the long run.