JumpStart offers students lessons learned by entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurial brainstorms aren't limited to the corporate boardroom. Sometimes they start in the college dorm room.

That's what happened with David Huang, John quintiliani and Matthew Weiss.

In the fall of 1999, the three were seniors at Duke University in North Carolina when they came up with the concept for their business, StartEmUp. The Durham-based company is designed to offer enterprising students the opportunity to gain insight from successful entrepreneurs.

Mr. Weiss says the inspiration for the company came from an observation that most business recruitment programs targeted seniors who were uncertain about their career plans.

"But [there was] nothing that really spoke to this spark -- that we were recognizing among our peers -- towards the entrepreneurial spirit," explains Mr. Weiss.

At first, the StartEmUp founders put their own company's principles into practice by working out of their Duke dorm rooms and by gaining corporate support and advisers to launch their business. Now StartEmUp seeks to be the connective tissue between students and the corporate world through its JumpStart events, a series of miniature conferences for students to meet with a panel of business executives.

The JumpStart events, sponsored by companies that set up exhibits there, create another opportunity for business-minded students to network. Students can attend for free, but need to preregister up to the day of the event and submit a resume.