Local entrepreneurs plan innovation in marketing

John Ramey and Evan Hareras, friends and partners, have now spent eight months developing an idea that could potentially revolutionize the advertising industry. Their idea is soon to take the form of isocket.com, an interactive social marketing Web site. \n“We saw a news story about a college student using marketing to pay for a laptop and we realized it was a very powerful idea,” Ramey said. “We wanted to figure out what we could do to improve the advertising industry. (The idea) just kept growing.”\nIsocket, a marketing platform, is an attempt to make advertising easier and more effective for everybody. Ramey and Hareras would not disclose the specific details of the site, as it has not yet been released.\nRamey, an entrepreneurship major, and Hareras, an economics major, would have entered their senior years at IU this fall, but decided to drop out of school to pursue their venture. \n“We both know that education is very important, but this is one of those opportunities that comes once in a lifetime,” Hareras said. “We are both young and it is a risk, but if it doesn’t work out, we can go back to school.”\nRamey and Hareras said it is hard to teach entrepreneurship and creativity in a classroom, and that someone can only learn by failing and trying again.\n“At the same time, the faculty has been great. (Donald) Kuratko and Joe Denekamp, both entrepreneurship professors, are very excited about it,” Ramey said. “I think they are on the entrepreneurship faculty because they like to see entrepreneurship, they like to see young people come up.”\nIU faculty, in turn, has shown appreciation for Ramey and Hareras.\n“John is extremely determined and I believe that his idea is excellent,” Kuratko said. “He has every indication that his concept will be a success.”\nDean of Students Dick McKaig has expressed that IU, as a family, will always be there for them, Hareras said.\nThis is not the first entrepreneurial experience for Ramey and Hareras, they said. As sophomores, they set up a real estate business, working especially on foreclosures. \n“When we were into real estate, we did it partly because it was easy to work around our schedules,” Ramey said. “But now with the Internet startup, it is almost impossible to balance. We wouldn’t have dropped out of school unless we believed isocket would be successful. ”\nRamey and Hareras said they know the stakes are high and are putting in their best to make isocket a success.\n“Three weeks ago, we were working on a demo and we spent 20 hours a day for one week working,” Evan said. “We literally slept on our desks and lived on Red Bull. That’s what it’s like with startups.”\nComing up with the idea was a roller coaster, but it turned out to be worth it when during their pitch at the end of the week they had an executive from General Electric tell them their idea was the best thing he had seen, Ramey said.\nRamey and Hareras are currently in the process of getting funding for isocket and are looking to raise $4 to $5 million.\n“We have gone around to angel investors and are now approaching executives (and) venture capitalists,” Ramey said.\nRamey and Hareras have had few disagreements in the process and have become the support system to each other.\n“Sometimes it gets hard for our friends to understand as we go on working even though we are our own bosses,” Hareras said. “But when Friday comes, we don’t get any pay checks but we go on with it as we believe in it.” \n“We believe we can make advertising more effective through isocket. There’s a lot of invasive advertising around. Come to think of it, it’s 2007 and people still get pop-ups,” Ramey said. “We are taking a different approach, we love what we do and hopefully it will pay off.”