TFLN Extra Credit Event

If you missed out on Friday's extra credit event, you unfortunately missed an interesting and entertaining program. I departed Livingston Hall quite amazed, yet a little disappointed about not winning the raffled book because I was only a couple numbers behind the last winner. However, there were many moments along the event that made my evening quite memorable, herein are a quick summary of just a few.

Texts From Last Night (TFLN), founded by Ben Bator and Lauren Leto own a unique story behind the development and success of their blog that posts one of a kind text messages that are hilarious and sometimes outrageous submitted by users each day. I was impressed with the way this small idea of socially sharing text messages has all of a sudden"blown up" (as they described the development of TFLN) to be something life changing and profitable.

Both Ben and Lauren, graduates of Michigan State University and law school drop outs, amazed me when they said they had only spent $200 initially to start up a fully functional domain website. They further amazed me when they said what the benefits of being entrepreneurs of TFLN. They have an iPhone app that has been purchased by approx. 1 million people (that's $1 million right there), have a TV show coming out in the near future on the FOX channel, a few books published and plenty of advertisement deals within the website.

After their brief storytelling, I found the texts they presented to us on the Powerpoint presentation not the most original and funny. The only one that got me laughing and chuckling for the rest of the night was the text that had a kid throwing milk at a girl while screaming "osteoporosis." It was also pretty fascinating to see Ben Bator open up his email presenting to us the thousands of texts that are sent to him to potentially be published to the website. Another segment of the event I liked, but thought it could of been better explained was when they described their daily routines each day. I anticipated for both of them to have relatively easy lives, exciting and easy-going, but as entrepreneurs, they have a lot on their shoulders. I'm not sure what their celebrity statuses are, but Ben spends everyday sitting in front of his desk scrolling and reading through the texts, making a decision if its TFLN worthy. Both Lauren and Ben did not describe their daily lives in too much depth, but that they are business people, in the business world.

All in all, it was a fun experience, and did not expect anything less. The story behind TFLN is inspiring and original. It might be another college drop out success, but it shows that the smallest ideas can turn out to be the best ideas. Like Lauren said, find something that you have an utter interest for and expand on it, because you never know what you can do with it just like them.