Clarkson to honor more freshmen entrepreneurs
POTSDAM — After a successful first year with its inaugural recipient, Clarkson University will offer Young Entrepreneur Awards to incoming freshmen who have demonstrated success in operating businesses.
Clayton native Matthew S. Turcotte, 18, founder and CEO of North Shore Solutions and a sophomore at the college, received Clarkson's first Young Entrepreneur Award last spring and has since been working with the college's Center for Entrepreneurship to expand his business. As part of the award program, Mr. Turcotte has received tuition remission, alumni mentoring and office space in the college's newly renovated Peyton Hall and has given Clarkson a 10 percent equity stake in North Shore Solutions.
"Matt really spurred on the idea because he was such an ideal candidate," Clarkson President Anthony G. Collins said about the award program's inception. "He's an excellent student, he's enterprising and he's very excited to be involved in a whole range of activities at Clarkson, not just academics. He's really an ideal person to be the first student we've done this with."
Mr. Collins established the Young Entrepreneur Award with the Center for Entrepreneurship in an effort to create mutually beneficial financial partnerships with students before they graduate. The program is designed to consider a recipient's financial need and other merit scholarships before offering a formal contract that exchanges an appropriate four-year tuition discount for the equity stake.
Mr. Turcotte, an innovation and entrepreneurship major and the college's only 2010-11 Young Entrepreneur Award recipient, founded North Shore Solutions as a 16-year-old to provide Web solutions for small businesses, municipalities and nonprofits in the north country.
His business has expanded to offer logo designs, electronic commerce options, online hosting services and consultations for other startup organizations.
"It's been a wonderful opportunity. The university has been very supportive, which is great," he said. "It's really forced me to manage my time very well, and it's taught me how to face challenges. It's a lot of hard work, and there's a lot of weeks where I put in 100 hours between school and my business, but it's grown pretty significantly. We're on track to bring in six figures this year."
Mr. Turcotte, whose customers include Watertown's Aubertine & Currier Architects and the towns of Clayton, Lyme and Orleans, plans to use the Young Entrepreneurship Award to help transform North Shore Solutions into a Web services leader in the Northeast within the next five years. In the near future, he hopes to strengthen his Web presence among Adirondack businesses and expand his company's services.
