Vincent Ta/HIGHLANDER
Vincent Ta/HIGHLANDER

Students with goals and dreams may think that they have to wait until after graduation to achieve them. For some, their time is now. Michael Lauchlan, a fifth-year transfer student majoring in linguistics and philosophy is not only a student, he’s an entrepreneur as well.

Lingsanity, one of his first business startups at UCR, is a donation-based tutoring service that designed to help students who cannot afford to pay for common tutoring service. Students can donate any amount they wish to in order to pay for Lauchlan’s service.

Another prominent business of his, Waybu, was launched nine months ago. Waybu is a brand of sunglasses made of bamboo that also gives donations to those in need. Lauchlan conceived the idea of Waybu when he broke his pair of Ray-Bans and started looking for something different to wear. “As an entrepreneur, if you are looking around for something and you can’t find it, you start it.” He was looking for something that was not mass produced like plastic, and he eventually found the bamboo wayfarer, or “Waybu,” as he called it. So he made his glasses out of that material, and with the help of other UCR students that he hired through internships via Scotjobs, he launched his company.

The glasses are manufactured in China and sold through the website online for $65 per pair. Lauchlan also turned that business into a charitable company. For every pair of sunglasses Waybu sells, the company will donate an AquaPak to a person in need of clean water in Haiti. The AquaPak is a solar water pasteurizer which is durable and easy to carry. “I wanted my brand to mean something more than just style. You have a sustainable style and you’re also sustaining someone else,” said Lauchlan.

He also helped found the Entrepreneur Society at UCR, which focuses on social entrepreneurship, or conducting business not purely for profit but to help others as well. Another startup of his, a marketing platform for manufacturers, Group Build It, involves a group of UCR students from BCOE. They take manufacturers’ products and market them on their marketing platform. This startup will require a lot of funding which Lauchlan has been trying to push for at business pitch competitions.

Although these startups may already seem like a lot for one student to take on, Lauchlan insists that he has even more projects planned. Lauchlan’s latest startup, Crowdfund Promotions, is a website where people can put their project and get it crowdfunded by people. “We do business consulting, marketing, branding and create the creative content. We let someone focus on their business and we crowdfund it.” The first company they took on was Spoiled Minds which is a student-run online magazine trying to launch its first print edition. It’s a project Lauchlan is very excited to be working with.

How does he stay motivated and focused? “I trick myself into staying motivated by whatever means possible.” Lauchlan also tries to mix his business interest with school by doing research at the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing at UCR, which focuses on the improvement of online retailing.

How does he have time to do it all with school? Lauchlan admitted he had thought of dropping out of school multiple times. “I don’t think you need to study business to do business. Entrepreneurship is way too innovative and fast-paced, that’s why I don’t think you can teach it,” he stated.

Lauchlan seems to be on the path he wants to be, but that doesn’t come without its sacrifices. “I gave up my social life and dating and I work every minute possible.” Lauchlan’s tip for students looking to get into the entrepreneur world is to know the difference between branding yourself and resume polishing. He likes to create brands because people respond to them more. “You have to think of yourself as a brand rather than just a one-page resume. I can land an interview because I send a few links of me rather than sending in a resume which employers see thousands of times.”