We're calling them Entrepreneurs, but many in the CMC community might call them Troublemakers. The short story: The five founders of claremontmckenna.com—seniors David Enrich, Devin Erhardt, A.J. Prager, David Alvillar, and Matt Grossmann—built a controversial online Web magazine promising "the word on the street" at CMC. Their editorial content relied on anonymous sources and hearsay—and subjected student leaders and faculty members to celebrity-grade scrutiny. Their renegade Insider's Guide promised "the lowdown on life at CMC" to prospective students. And they did all this under the name claremontmckenna.com—a domain name that they beat CMC to registering, tying up the school in almost three years of negotiations. Troublemakers—short and simple.

But the lessons of the longer story are a little harder to distill. These five students found a demand, and created a product to meet that demand. In fact, you may find more of a classic CMC entrepreneurship story than you expect. Read on...

The tale begins—as so many college entrepreneur stories do—in a dorm room at 4 in the morning. In the wee hours of Nov. 18, 1998, Erhardt and Alvillar were hanging out in Enrich and Grossmann's Boswell Hall dorm room, lamenting what they perceived as a declining social scene on campus. They also felt there was no easy-to-use information source for Claremont students—on the Web or elsewhere. "Even simple things like finding campus phone numbers and promoting five-college parties were difficult," Erhardt says.

The five wanted a way to discuss campus issues—grades, dorm life, events—and perceived a "media vacuum" in Claremont. "CMC's Web site was first and foremost a marketing tool, with no information for students once they got here. And the college newspapers didn't have a critical function—they either reprinted or regurgitated CMC's press releases," says Enrich.

The founders disagree as to what came first—the discovery of the claremontmckenna.com domain name or the idea to start a student-centered Web site. But that night, a cursory Internet search located the unregistered and available name. They saw an opportunity: a highly visible domain name they could use to build an information center for CMC's students, faculty, prospective students, and alumni, with campus calendars, student directories, news, a message board, online bookstores—the possibilities were limitless. The four pooled the $150 domain name registration fee and purchased the name that night. The next morning, they shared their plan with Prager, who pitched in and became part of the operation.

Whether the site was designed to be contentious from the start is a point of disagreement for the five founders. "We never meant to criticize the school," says Alvillar. "Trying to stir up the administration and get into a name dispute was the least of our intentions." Prager and Erhardt, for the most part, agree. "We weren't trying to be adversarial," Erhardt says. "We love CMC. We were trying to open a dialogue, and promote discussion."

The founders of Claremontmckenna.com are (clockwise from left) Matt Grossman, A.J. Prager, David Enrich, Devin Erhardt, and David Alvillar.