OurBuckeyeHub.com
Founder: Maurice Womack
OURBUCKEYEHUB.COM’S 100UE BLOG: CLICK HERE!
Web • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube
(614) 946-2034 • maurice@ourbuckeyehub.com
To read a Q&A with OurBuckeyeHub.com’s Maurice Womack, click here.
OurBuckeyeHub.com is the leading social network for students, alumni and plain old fans of The Ohio State University, connecting Buckeyes around the globe to share news, photos and other information about careers, events, businesses . . . and, of course, sports.
HOW MENTORING WILL HELP: “Experience! I’ve been making this journey by myself and have received advice from several individuals — but none have been entrepreneurs who have built successful businesses. I am a sponge, and I need someone to guide me. An experienced mentor will cut my learning time in half.”
HOW $10,000 WILL HELP: “It will help us with marketing. We need to hit the campus area and get the word out to the students. We will also use the money to upgrade our technology infrastructure. We currently use shared hosting servers, which may not be equipped to handle a large spike in traffic. We plan on moving to a VPS (virtual private server), which should speed up site response and cover us when traffic increases.”
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FEW COMMUNITIES ARE as passionate about their shared interest as college students and alumni — and few such groups can compete with partisans of The Ohio State University for their devotion to their school. Harnessing that excitement and commitment and channeling them into a broad-based social network is Maurice Womack’s OurBuckeyeHub.com.
“Hubs are more about what you care about, not who you know,” says Womack, 33, a Youngstown, Ohio, native who began his college career on an academic scholarship from OSU. “We’re not just a sports blog, though we’re fanatical about our Bucks. We’re a hub for current and former students to interact and share information.” That includes not just opinions about the football team but also career services, photo and video sharing, community blogs and more.
Womack got a degree in mechanical engineering technology, which he put to good use in developing OurBuckeyeHub. (In his day job, he’s a mechanical engineer for the Defense Logistics Agency in Columbus.) “I taught myself how to build Web sites,” he says. “The Internet is the future, and with the low startup costs, I knew it was the way to go. OurBuckeyeHub is the culmination of what I have learned.”
Although he’s focusing strictly on OSU for the moment, Womack’s plans are as big as the entire college universe. Currently in development are OurGoBlueHub.com (for Ohio State’s hated rivals, the University of Michigan) and — in an indication of the scope of his ambitions — OurCollegeHub.com. “The battle of the social networks is over, and Facebook has won,” he says, sanguine about the potential for a business model like his. “Welcome to the age of the hub.” •
