En-tre-pre-neur. Most of us couldn’t pronounce that word until we were twelve, let alone understand its significance. Here on the Farm, however — though we may still have difficulty spelling that word — it has become part of our everyday lexicon.

What’s the deal with Stanford spawning so many entrepreneurs anyway?

“Everyone and their mother at Stanford wants to start a company,” said Kayvon Beykpour ‘10, co-founder of TerriblyClever Design, an advertising agency with clients that include Sprint, Best Buy and Comcast. “What’s great is that the resources in people, ideas and collaboration that Stanford provides make it so conducive to do so.”

Features presents a closer look at two startups, Increo Solutions and TerriblyClever, run by current students.

Increo Solutions

Increo Solutions was founded one year ago by Stanford students Jeff Seibert ‘08, Kimber Lockhart ‘08, Rebecca Illowsky ‘08 and Ray Thang ‘08. The idea arose from CS 194, a course that gave the four students an entire quarter to craft their own project.

To aid in their brainstorming, the team created a platform for members to share their project ideas. They soon realized the power that sharing different ideas could have, so they decided to build an idea exchange network that would make it easier for everyone to access and share ideas. This is how Backboard was born.

“Backboard allows users to give and receive feedback, exchange thoughts and brainstorm ideas on any document,” said Seibert. “This makes it a very functional and practical tool, especially for group projects.”

“Not everyone wants to share their ideas with the world,” said Lockhart, speaking of blogs and other open platforms for thought-exchange. “However, people working within a group or company have more incentive to make their ideas be heard, exchanged and implemented, which is what Backboard seeks to address.”

But the path to fame thus far hasn’t been an easy one.

“We worked almost full-time on the project during summer and the school year,” said Lockhart. “Raising money, especially as a student, is very tough, and bottlenecks are many and unexpected — you just have to focus on the task at hand and work toward achieving it as quickly as possible.”

So how has being at Stanford complemented the journey?

“Coming from Baltimore, a city dominated by [Johns Hopkins University] where everyone wants to be a doctor, Stanford has been nothing short of encouraging in my endeavor to establish a tech start-up,” said Seibert. “The network database is invaluable; you just need to learn to leverage it.”

“The Stanford culture has a high tolerance for failure,” added Lockhart. “If your start-up doesn’t do too well, it is not representative of your skills; embrace the failure and see how much more the Valley has to offer.”

The Increo team concluded with this advice.

“Find a good team,” Lockhart said. “Everyone kept telling me to do so but I didn’t realize how important that bit of advice actually was until I started spending hours on end with my group.”

“Also, incorporate early on,” Lockhart added. “Once life picks up, you realize that there’s no time for small things later on.”

TerriblyClever Design

Finding that perfect team can be a challenge, but sometimes it’s an obvious choice — like parternering with your best friend since elementary school. That’s just what sophomore Kayvon Beykpour did with Joe Bernstein, who currently works full-time for the company out of Boston.

TerriblyClever is an advertising agency that specializes in helping big brands expand to the Facebook medium. What started out as a basic Web design platform five years ago has turned into a company that assists clients with bringing their marketing campaign to Facebook.

“As consumers and producers of Facebook, we are in a good position to build upon the expertise of the medium and develop sophisticated applications to change the way people think about applications,” said Beykpour.

“Our newest application, Travel Journal, lets the user document his or her trips on Facebook, providing a centralized place to put pictures, journal entries and scrapbook notes,” he said. “Letting the user see geographically what his or her trips look like is a cool way to contextualize your trips.”

Beykpour shared his take on this Valley term of “entrepreneurship” and founding companies as a Stanford student.

“TerriblyClever has been a great experience in dealing with people, managing time and balancing school and work,” he said. “Undeniably, however, the resources at Stanford made for a very conducive environment to collaborate, learn and grow.”

As for advice, Beykpour’s thoughts are simple.

“You need to love what you do — I wouldn’t have been able to spend 900 hours on a project if I didn’t feel passionate about it,” he said. “And on a side note, my Facebook status was online throughout those 900 hours, but I’m really not that massive a stalker.”

Visit www.getbackboard.com and www.terriblyclever.com if you want to get your ideas heard or your travels documented.