Alex Biehn - Online backup system for students

We ran out of battery power on the camera for Alex and Gabriele.

My idea for a new venture is an online backup service targeted at students. This would be a subscription based service that can be paid for by the month or on a semester basis. It would partner with universities so that students would have a worry free place to back up their files on their computers. This would solve a problem of having to constantly back up personal computers at home and give them a distant secure place to back up files in case something happened in their dorm, home, or apartment. The computer could be set up to automatically back up all files on the computer at night or at a set time daily. This way if the computer crashed or was broken all the student would have to do is log in to their account and reinstall the files on a new computer or the repaired one.

The start-up costs for this venture would be the costs of building a website, programming, and having the space to store files. Since more space can be bought as needed, the business model is very scalable, and you could even go the route of having another server hosting the site so that you never actually have to buy big hard drives to store the data on. This way you just rent or buy more space as you gain more and more customers. This could start as a very small business on this very campus.

The rates for the business would be something like $5 a month or $20 for a semester per student. Since most of the files on a computer might only add up to a few gigabytes starting with a terabyte external hard drive could service multiple customers. There is competition but I have not found anything targeted at students yet. Most of the online backup services are targeted at businesses. This would be a valuable tool for students with all of the class work being done on computers these days. If you could get 20,000 students at the university to sign up for the semester then the revenues would be $400,000. This would a hue profit margin with the relatively low start up costs. Getting programs set up at more and more universities would make this business a very lucrative venture.