60+ College Campus Business Ideas You Can Start Today [2023]

My paternal grandfather was my mentor in Indian music. He taught me Carnatic vocals when I was 4 years old. He was my inspiration. My maternal grandfather was a businessman who ran hotels, lodges, oil and rice mills, spares shops, etc. He too was my inspiration. My mom will always be an inspiration to me as she taught me righteousness and virtues.

Also, my school provided great exposure to dance and vocal, both being my passion. I had participated in various cultural competitions and events during school and got recognized and awarded by our Chief Minister and Governor at that time. I even performed in the International sports festival inauguration dance that happened in India during my grade 12. The thrill was the music was composed by our Oscar awardee AR Rahman, India's pride. I used to be actively participating in Lions club events, competitions, and Bookfair every year.

To start any business we need to have the investment and I definitely wanted to save for that big day. It took me years and I decided after my younger kid was born. I wanted to balance my work and family life better, without compromising both and also keep them growing.

As an athlete and coach myself, I have experienced many situations that left me feeling dismayed at the state of affairs for women and girls involved in sports. I recall one such instance where I was playing at a very competitive level and the head coach screamed at me from 2 inches away with every expletive he could think of in front of our entire team because I asked him a question about the drill that was being done. I still vividly remember the spittle flying out of his mouth and hitting me in the face and not knowing what to do. The powerlessness I felt at that moment, coupled with the lack of appropriate response by the system when I reported him left me feeling hopeless for my future in sports. I ended up quitting soccer and refused to touch a ball for an entire year.

On the coaching side - as someone with 16 years of experience now, there are still instances in which I am treated differently than my male counterparts. One such example was when I was on the sideline waiting for the referee to come over and check my team prior to the start of the game. I was dressed in my coaching attire, had the whistle around my neck, the clipboard in my hand, and the player cards ready to be presented when the referee walked over to our sideline. He made eye contact with me and then proceeded to walk over the dad who happened to be on our side tying his daughter’s shoe and assumed that he was the coach.

Take time for yourself! Being an entrepreneur is hard work and you can’t do it to the best of your ability if you haven’t taken time for yourself to rest and rejuvenate. Self-care is integral to success.

I was led to this career path as a business owner from my sheer motivation to do better in my life than what I had grown up with. My parents had me when they were teenagers and we lived meagerly while I was young.

I knew that if I wanted to go to college, I would need to find a way to pay for it myself along with my cost of living. I naturally had a knack for doing hair and art, so when I was 16, I had the chance to enroll in cosmetology school while in high school, and by 18, I was fully licensed. This was much more affordable for me than the traditional college route, so that’s what led me to pursue it.

When I received my license in 1995, I started working behind the chair at Supercuts. I slowly worked my way up the ladder to high-end salons. Five years later, I got a small suite at the Gallery of Salons and was an independent contractor. That was my initial stepping stone to running my own business.

Half of my life ago (23 years ago) I immigrated from Moscow, Russia to the United States with an MS in Engineering and was trying to figure out the best way to leverage the degree for my career in the US. I’ve worked in several tech jobs, mostly focusing on Software development and picked up web programming on the way.

While I enjoyed my tech jobs I felt there are more interesting ways to apply my skills. At the same time I’ve seen my father being miserable after he was laid off from his highly paid Hi-tech job, I simply felt there got to be a better way to make a living.

So a friend of mine from University and I launched our first website, initially a hobby business we named flowers2moscow.com - servicing just our home city of Moscow. The idea came from my own negative experience trying to send flowers back home to my girlfriend and to my parents. Product and service experience were far from perfect, so our first website was born.

It was a bad habit. Buying books and not finishing them...

One tap on Amazon, and bang, there it was on my kindle or my doormat the next day. I’d fleetingly read a review or even just a crunching blurb and my key words, curiosities or aspirations had slapped me round the face and before I’d considered a sensible swipe-by it was too late.

I’d become a heavy user. Buying non-fiction books at quite a click. But the problem was not so much the cost — at the most I was spending £20 a month — which I saw as a solid investment in potentially 2–3 life-changing reads. The problem was I couldn’t get past page 100 (or 25%) of almost all of the books I’d bought.

In 2012 I started working as a freelancer in business planning, website design and development, and internet marketing in West Bengal. In 2014, I moved to Bangalore and founded Creatisoul. Under the roof of Creatisoul, we served many clients in Education, Real Estate, NGOs, Insurance, Catering, and the Packing-Moving Industry.

We have a strong network of more than 700-800 packers and we have successfully served more than 50,000 customers across approximately 23 cities.

While working for the packers movers industry, we noticed that customers were mainly impacted by fake and unprofessional moving companies. Once we delved deeper into the industry, we found many loopholes and high levels of disorganization.

So here’s how I got into working for myself:

• From 17 - 22 I was in a punk band called Lanemeyer. We toured 8 times over 2.5 years. Then we broke up because we were a shit show.

• When I turned 22 I moved to LA to figure life out. While working at a P.F. Chang’s in Woodland Hills, a buddy of mine had a clothing company called Down Apparel. I decided that I wanted to start a clothing company, bought a Gateway PC for $1,300, and started designing. I got a cracked version of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator not realizing these programs were scary as hell. I moved back to NJ and put myself through a technical school to learn graphic design.

My name is TJ. I am currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer and 50% owner. I was originally hired to help my business partner Peter wash dishes and make breakfast. Peter had been meal prepping for about 1 year before he brought me on board. When I was hired, I saw that he was a fantastic chef, handled sales, and was able to grow without efficiency.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. That one Facebook video doubled our client base overnight.

I filled in the gaps and taught him how to properly scale the company, hire more employees, and both structure and organize it into a self-sustaining business. I lacked the sales and cooking experience he had. So we were very yin and yang.

Ryan came up with the idea in late 2018. The founders (Ryan and Lowell) actually worked together at another eCommerce company. Funnily enough, Ryan was Lowell’s boss. Ryan had been a casual CBD user for a few months when he heard talk of the 2018 Farm Bill coming down the pipeline. The 2018 Farm Bill was what unequivocally legalized CBD on the federal level. Up until that point, it had been very much in a legal grey area. He also was really interested in the recurring revenue model that subscription boxes provide.

We launched the business in ~5 months from idea to website launch, all while maintaining full-time jobs.

With this impetus to start the business, Ryan approached Lowell with the idea. Lowell initially took some convincing to come on board but after starting, we never looked back. We knew that the subscription box model was perfect for the business as it was a consumable product that customers would regularly need to replenish every month. Additionally, it’s a new industry where curation was important. People wanted help deciding which products to purchase and also needed to be educated on how to try CBD.

My personal story begins with my parents immigrating to Los Angeles to start a better life. Although ethnically Chinese, they were both born and raised in Japan as a result of my grandparents from both sides fleeing communist China. I was born in an extremely diverse neighborhood (we had around 7 different ethnicities on our block) near Pasadena, CA, before moving to Japan for 5 years between the age of 10-15.

I grew up playing sports and competing at a national level in Kendo, cross country, and track. I started Kendo at the age of 5 and competed at the national level in the United States and Japan. In high school, I was co-captain of our cross country and track team where we competed in the Division I state and national championships. It was through running that I truly learned perseverance and grit.

Unfortunately, at 19 years old, I became a paraplegic when I fell from 35 feet in the air in a snowboarding accident and shattered my back. Doctors told me that I would never walk again, but it furthered my drive and passion for adventure and trying new things. I finished college with degrees in Chemistry and Economics and continued to compete in marathons even got to train with the US Paralympic team.

We both had previous experience in another start-up called Soul id which was a social media platform for action sports. We ran the marketing and media at that company which was a blast. After we left that company, we split directions. Eli got involved in the eCommerce industry by starting a brand called Winterial which he grew to hundreds of SKUs. Kyle headed in the media direction and started a commercial photography company where he worked with Fortune 500 companies and small businesses.

At this time Kyle wanted to be able to get back in the start-up world, grow a large brand and a team of like-minded creatives and innovators. So like any entrepreneur, he jumped on Google and started to search for media companies that were also technology-based companies as well. That is where the inspiration of starting a digital agency that solely focused on the media portion for brands and product companies came to life.

Culture is the centerpiece of a successful company. Creating a place for employees to come to work and enjoy what they do, the environment and who they work with will pay long term dividends.

Ten years ago, my husband and I were working in an office set-up. Due to a mix of struggles experienced, my husband and I decided to quit our job and transition into freelancing. The transition phase was difficult since we didn't have the facilities needed like a computer and internet connection. We worked in an internet cafe for the first month of our freelancing career until we bought our personal computer and had our internet connection.

We had experience downtime in our new career at first, but we grow and learn from our mistakes as we go along. Freelancing changed the quality of our lives, our family, and so with our marriage. We embrace these benefits to realize that if mothers can work at home, they can earn while taking care of their family.

Another thing is the overseas workers. They have been working far from their family to make a living. Those who are exhausted and feel unproductive because of many circumstances like long hours of commute eat a lot of their time, endangering their work-life balance. These are a few of our realizations why we come up with putting Filipino Virtual Assistance. Because we know how difficult it is to work far from our family, we want to empower Filipino families, one freelancer at a time. We want to provide our graduates an avenue to earn dollars at their homes' comfort, without the hassle of traffic, toxicity of the environment, and an excellent opportunity for those who never got the chance to go to College.

I always loved creating with my hands and I tend to get carried away with presents and cards during the holidays. That being said, I was content that my passion for drawing and painting would be a minor supporting role while I majored in Interior Architecture and worked as an Interior Designer over the next 4 years after I graduated.

So one day when my then boss passive aggressively asked what day I would like to show up for work that week, I told her ‘how about none?’... and never looked back.

It wasn’t until 2015 where I decided to pick up modern calligraphy as a hobby. Upon admiring all the more established calligraphers’, I realize that working on bespoke custom wedding invitations would allow me to do everything I love and at the same time make a living off of it.

Five years ago I was really lost and confused about what career path to pursue. I had graduated from college with a degree in Biology in hopes of becoming a doctor. I quickly found out that I didn’t want to spend my life working in an office or having to see as many patients as I could fit into my schedule to make back my medical school expenses. At the end of my senior year, I started to watch blogging really start to take off and was immediately interested—this was an entirely new career path we hadn’t see before and something about it made me want to learn more. I figured out how to use WordPress and made a free account to start something like a food blog. I published a few articles and just wrote about what I was eating and why I was so focused on eating nutritious foods over others.

After stumbling upon a writer’s Instagram profile with the bio, “Contributing Writer at EliteDaily”—I Googled, “How to be a contributing writer at EliteDaily” and sent in my application. They accepted me (to be fair, I think they were accepting everyone at this time) and I wrote a few articles for them. That was my first taste of the writing life, unpaid work that could get views if it struck the right chord with their audience. Those articles are still online today haha. But, because this was so new into the blogging world and I had absolutely no idea how to monetize or figure any of this out on my own, I didn’t take the opportunity too seriously. I assumed I’d need a “regular” job and soon stopped writing for EliteDaily.

After I graduated, I decided that I would take a break from applying to jobs I didn’t want and instead obligated myself to do something I loved every day with the hope of stumbling upon my passion and purpose. While it seems obvious now that I wanted to be a writer, at the time I was still pretty lost and confused. I didn’t know any successful internet writers and I wasn’t confident enough to ask people for help, guidance, or advice. But, a few weeks into obligating myself to do something that I loved every day, I started writing again.

Honestly, the idea started as a hobby.

When I started the blog in 2007, it was meant to be an alternative to the major men’s magazines on shelves because the magazine industry still hadn’t fully accepted the fact that everything was going digital and that print would be dying a slow and painful death. I wanted men to have access to cool guy things online, as well as dating advice, with a focus on realistic male acquisitions instead of focusing on things your average guy could not afford. Promoting the "fake it till you make it mentality".

I had worked for a magazine called Performance Auto and Sound Magazine pasmag.com, so I had in-depth knowledge about the business from a print perspective.

Confidence in my sexuality was something I had to cultivate; I didn’t want others to feel alone like I did. I was resentful of the narrative that men having orgasms was expected, while women experiencing pleasure was extraordinary. “That’s just the way things are,” one of my (male) friends told me.

No.

Women can take charge of their sexual experience in so many ways, like:

I started FilterGrade in late 2013 after getting some encouragement from a friend and mentor of mine. I was selling digital products on a few different marketplaces and just starting to get curious about entrepreneurship and software. In the beginning, it was just a collection of Photoshop Actions I made and packaged under the FilterGrade brand. I didn’t even launch my website with a store at first, I sold through Creative Market to test the products and see if there was any traction. I wrote more about this on Medium where I detailed the experience of using marketplaces to build an MVP.

Business models that worked 2-3 years ago are not as effective anymore, so we are constantly looking at new ways to adapt and better serve people who are both buying and selling on the marketplace.

After 6 months and some reasonable traction, I decided to set up a full eCommerce website and store using WooCommerce. It started slow. I was just focused on product development, marketing, and building the brand and learning about the industry.

I am a licensed attorney in India and right after my master’s in law, I started working with a leading company as a lawyer. I worked there for about two years before I quit my job to become more location independent.

Choose a niche in whatever you start. It is critical for streamlining your efforts and make money.

My job paid me well but I worked 12 hours a day, I was exhausted by the end of each day, spent my weekends sleeping and I almost quit the things I liked to do - for example, sketching, yoga, traveling, etc.

I've always loved technology and I ran a few online businesses from my bedroom as a kid.

I founded an events company at university (when I should've been in lectures), and my love of software meant we were able to launch some pretty unique events… like a "Wall Street" nightclub where we installed screens and hacked the cash registers to make the drink prices rise and crash throughout the night. People loved it.

There's a lot to be said for building in public, keeping assumptions to a minimum, and iterating based on what you learn from your audience and their needs… It taught us so much about what the product needed to be, and more importantly what the product didn't need to be yet.

I am a French citizen who has been living in Germany for more than 10 years, and I feel European. I studied as an exchange student in the USA, I studied in Germany via the Erasmus programm and gained a double Master’s in Business from a German and a French university.

I started my career as an export area manager in the casual shoe business. I liked my job, but wanted to be on the field close to the customers and so I left to join a safety products producer as Export Manager. There I really learned what selling means: To understand the needs of your customer and deliver the best product to ensure customer satisfaction. Selling is a win-win. Once I knew how to sell, I joined a producer of massive oak furniture as Export Director.

After this, I wanted to return to Germany and took on a position as Country Manager for an eLearning company. I am living proof that a salesperson can work and be successful in many different industries.

My name is Asia Crawford and I am a Motherhood, Life, and Travel blogger that resides in Vancouver, Canada. I am a wife and mother to two sweet little girls aged 4 and 2!

I started with no community, 0 followers on any media page I had and in just two years have grown to 18.5K followers on Instagram, 1.2 MILLION monthly viewers on my Pinterest, 12.5K Pageviews a month on my blog website and have been nominated for 3 blogging awards.

I am Chhavi, the founder and owner of the blog and YouTube channel Mrs Daaku Studio along with my husband Amit.

Our blog, YouTube channel, and products are designed to help you achieve what we have (...and, more).

My name is Ben Elizer, and I am the Founder and President of Velocity International Group, a full-scale logistics company, offering SameDay delivery, Expediting, Distribution, Fulfillment, andmany Warehousing Services. We offer to consult and some other services as well to help our customers succeed in an ultra-competitive environment. Velocity started with 2 vans and many faces to face conversations. We now have 10+ vehicles, including trucks, and have grown to 25k+ square feet of warehouse space as well to best serve our customers.

Over the past 2 years, our revenue has grown over 300%, which has completely contributed to the great people and culture we have at Velocity. After having to move out of my apartment (because I put everything financially I had into this company), and move back into my mom’s house in my mid 20’s, it was difficult, but just 6 months later we had our first small office and warehouse space. I’m fortunate I had a support system to move back into, or else Velocity might not be here today. The business has grown ever since because of hard work, trust, and relationships. We focus on what is important.

Hi, I’m Jess. I’m 34 years old from Tasmania, Australia. I started Chasing Planner Peace back in 2015 when I was pregnant with my third child. Originally we were based on Etsy and only sold planner inserts, however, we’ve now turned into a one-stop planner shop that caters to seasoned “planner addicts” who want to add to their planners, and also planner newbies who love the fact our shop is the only store in Australia you can custom build your own ring planner style planner.

Over the past few years, we’ve really expanded our range to not only offer planners and inserts, but also planner dashboards (beautiful cover pages), dividers, notepads, stationery items and more. We also recently started our subscription box service where every two months customers can receive a “Planner Peace Box” which is full of planner and self-care goodies. We have so many more plans for new products in 2020.

I'm Vaibhav Kishnani, an engineer but a passionate writer by profession. I established Content-Whale in 2017 when I was in my third year of engineering. Going by the maxim that quality writing is everything, Content-Whale caters to 42 different content types that form the backstory of every company’s digital presence and marketing efforts.

I started this content agency with a mere sum of Rs. 2,500. Today, we have drawn a revenue turnover of Rs. 4 Crores! In my opinion, it is not individual progress. Instead, a start-up is about connecting with the right individuals at the right time, who keep the show running ahead with their strife for perfection.

Hi, my name is Rafael Hernandez and I am the founder of Alfred Lane. I have a line of personal and home fragrances handcrafted in small batches out of our Miami studio. I began selling solid colognes initially as an alternative to spray colognes and released three fragrances.

The business generates $19k a month in revenue. In 2020, the company had its best year ever. I opened a production studio where we make everything and hired a studio assistant all within the last 5 months. It’s been more than 8 years since I started and the journey has been a wild one.

Bonjour! My name is Anthony Rosemond. I'm a Parisian chef & founder of Pastreez, an online French bakery.

We’ve sold over 1 million macarons to this date, with only a team of two.

Bella McFadden (a.k.a. Internet Girl) started iGirl in 2017, while she was a teenager growing up in Canada and building an alt-fashion community from the bottom using only social media, her own selected wardrobe, and Depop, a social e-commerce platform to buy & sell fashion.

Her aesthetic sense, inspired by Y2K emo culture made iGirl the underground internet's hottest commodity.

iGirl has quite a strong social media presence, and she uses this to her advantage to market her products online. The iGirl Instagram account has more than 380K followers and Bella’s YouTube channel Internet Girl has over 138K subscribers.

iGirl quickly went viral & instantly became popular in the goth-loving community once they launched their cult classic original accessories and apparel.

Bella became Depop’s first user to earn over 1 million dollars, is now living her best life in Los Angeles. As of Oct. 1, she's making the leap from app user to launching her own website, igirlworld.com, where she'll move away from resale and focus on selling her original designs under her brand name, iGirl.

Read the full story on thestar.com ➜

My name is Beth Baxter and I co-founded Camper Cafe, a mobile coffee van business. The idea for our business started with my partner’s love for vintage VW campervans. He had a rusty old shell of a T25 Campervan given to him, that he wanted to convert into a trailer for his motorbikes.

Although we never really thought about this ever becoming more than just a lifestyle business, we found we were turning so much work away from that in 2019 when the company was turning over around £150k from working only 70 days of the year, we decided that I should go full-time to see the potential.

My name is John Zarbock. I am the CEO and Founder of BioFit. I started my business in November of 2018 in St. Louis, Missouri. We build better humans by providing them with the most effective, efficient, and safe exercise on the planet. We do this through the High-Intensity Training (HIT) methodology mostly by leveraging the Adaptive Resistance Exercise (ARX) machines. They are designed to achieve exercise results in as little as 20 minutes a week by performing not only each rep and set near perfectly but also allowing for the maximum amount of intensity every moment of every session in the safest way possible while giving each client real-time feedback on progress and performance. We deploy a simple success formula: Work + Rest = Growth.

We currently have approximately 125 clients and our average monthly revenue is $20k. We have about an 80% closing ratio and our client retention is over 70%. The intricacies of the business have been very dynamic as I have served more than half of my time operating it while on Active Duty for the Army. I am currently deployed overseas in Kuwait so there have been challenges in growth and scale but we have grown year over year in both memberships and revenue despite having a skeleton crew of dedicated team members and partners in the last two years.

Hello! My name is Nishant Tripathi, and I founded Dhobilite, a premium online dry cleaning, and laundry service. I started this company in 2011 with a vision to pioneer laundry service in India.

We started operations in the year 2011. Over the years, we experimented with and developed our business model and software. In 2015, we disrupted the laundry market and became India's first app-based, on-demand laundry service provider. We have expanded into more than 15 cities in the last two years and have around 20+ stores today. In addition, we have 30 plus franchises. We also have factories in Gurgaon, Noida, Lucknow, Hyderabad, and Faridabad.

Thanks for giving me this lovely opportunity, I’m Arpit Aryan Gupta and I’m currently running a garment export unit called NG Apparels that is based in Ludhiana, catering to all clothing segments across the globe.

My father lost a lot of money in the 2008 crash in the US market which pushed us out of the market and my father had to shut down his fabric trading business but I established the garment manufacturing business back in 2012 and with God’s grace the business has grown exponentially. I have a turnover of 12cr($1,581,547) without any loan or CC limit requirements.

Hello! I’m Matt Studdert, and I’m the founder of Frontend Mentor. We are an online learning community that helps people improve their front-end coding skills by building projects. Instead of providing learning tutorials, we provide professionally designed challenges to help our community gain real-life experience building websites and web apps.

Today, we have over 200,000 members on the platform and grow at over 16,000 new members per month. Of those 200,000+ members, we have 1,500+ paid subscribers generating over $15,000 MRR.