[media-credit name=’RAY PFEIFFER/Herald photo’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]For many University of Wisconsin students, owning two houses and a new BMW Z4 is out of the question. Not for Drew Breneman.

Since as early as middle school, the UW junior has considered himself an entrepreneur. From small business ventures to major real estate purchases, his story is a portrait of young, fresh ideas blossoming into success.

"There was a period where I was making $9 an hour every hour I was alive," he recalled. "And my friends weren't even making that at their jobs. And I only put in an hour or two a day."

Cataloging his history of business ventures took up an entire notebook page, beginning with work as a magician when he was not even 15 years old. Realizing he could be profitable through business ventures doing the things he loved, Breneman graduated from magic to paintball and then to computer games, where he really began to build capital.

"I found out that people would pay money for [online computer game items] and I could sell [them] for real money," he said. "And I ended up selling six figures of stuff a year."

Breneman joked that his business, which by then had grown to include his own website and more than 10,000 transactions per year, was so much a part of his life that in a typical day he would go to class, come home to log 20 or more transactions in overflowing notebooks, go to bed and repeat.

And looking back, Breneman admits his ventures sound "so crazy," but at the same time, his business interests have always just come naturally as if "it was just the right thing to do then."

With more personal business experience than most college students before he even applied to UW, Breneman had no intent to slow down once he got to the university.

In March of his freshman year of college, Breneman bought his first house near Vilas Park in Madison; just two days later, he was dubbed a "financial wiz kid" in a nationally televised interview on the Home and Garden channel.

Since then, Breneman bought two more campus-area houses and sold one for $50,000 more than he paid for it.

"For the first time ever, I have a tenant who is younger than me," he said, adding he fields calls from 20 tenants on a daily basis, just like any other landlord.

Living for free on top of making money off his houses is a better situation than most students have with Madison housing, he acknowledged. But he said he keeps perspective, reminding himself that not everything works, and not everything comes easily.

Breneman listed several business ventures he tried his hand in that were not nearly as successful, but said the fact that he's "not afraid to try things" is why he is where he is today.

While many would find Breneman's work too risky and expensive, the high-stakes challenge is just what Breneman is interested in.

"With my friends, a lot of the stuff I do, they say, 'Oh, that's great but I could never do it,'" he said. "And I hope they don't think like that for a long time."

According to Breneman, he is just like any other student — but he knows what he wants to do and takes the risk to make it happen. Anyone can have the success he's had, he said, with a little vision and a lot of dedication.

Despite turning more profit than most people his age could only imagine, Breneman insists financial success is not his only goal.

"I don't want to be a billionaire," he said. "I got the start and if I wanted to, I could try … but you just think: What should I be doing with my life right now? It's not waking up at 8:30 and going to work and that's it."

Having only one job in his entire life, he knew from an early age that he "didn't want to waste time working."

For Breneman, there is an easier way.

Student Entrepreneurship

Just two years ago, Forbes Magazine named Madison the No. 1 city in the United States for business and careers; students of the university that sit in the middle of the thriving city seem to know that better than anyone.

While Breneman is more of the exception rather than the rule, he is by no means the only student entrepreneur on campus. Students from all fields have found success with start-up business before ever leaving the university.

Nick O'Brien is one of those students. Along with fellow Badgers Mitch Nick and Chandler Nault, O'Brien designed FireSite, a signal transmitter system designed to guide firefighters out of smoke-filled buildings, and took the $10,000 top prize in an annual innovation competition held at UW.

The inventors went on to other competitions with their product, totaling enough winnings to invest into developing the product into a business.

While only in the infancy of a major business venture, O'Brien said he finds motivation in looking to UW alumni who have gone on to hit it big.

O'Brien pointed to Matt Younkle, who won the same competition in 1996 that FireSite dominated in 2005, saying, "It's that star power, when you see someone who makes it — that makes you want to do it."

Younkle's big project was TurboTap, a beer tap that pours beer four times faster than a typical tap and increases keg yield by 30 percent.

Since turning his product into a major business — and marketing to dozens of major ballparks across the country — O'Brien said Younkle does not hesitate to return to his roots at UW and give back to the program where he found success.

But it is not just inventors who find business success as students.

Kristen Berman, founder of NetNerds, said her business success stemmed from a simple problem she, and other students across campus, had on a day-to-day basis: fixing their computers.

"When I was a sophomore, I lived with five other girls and none of us could ever fix our own computers," the fifth-year senior said. "It was frustrating. … So I created something to solve that problem."

With a simple spreadsheet of contacts and a big vision, Berman began a business by connecting people with computer problems to "NetNerds" who could help.

"I started out doing everything — answering the phones, doing the scheduling," she said. "It was a real one-man show then. But I learned how to delegate."

Just this semester Berman has been able to step back a bit from the company, she said, handing over tasks to people who now work under her.

The developers of Sconnie.com are experiencing similar success, as their business has grown to include an online store that offers custom screen-printing in addition to their traditional Sconnie apparel.

As UW freshmen in their Kronshage Hall dorm rooms, Troy Vosseller and Ben Fiechtner came up with the idea to put their favorite slogan on a T-shirt, and the business grew from there.

"We each put in $300 to make 100 shirts of two different designs," Vosseller recalled. "And we sold out in about a week."

Profits they make go back into the company, Vosseller said, to increase their inventory and expand their product line.

"We've never had to take out a loan," he said. "We do have a pretty high revenue, but for the most part we do it just because it's fun."

While he admitted running a start-up business requires a lot of sacrifice, Vosseller — like Breneman, O'Brien and Berman — did not hesitate to say all the hard work has been well worth it.

UW: an epicenter for innovation

While these student entrepreneurs vary in their business plans and strategies, they all have one thing in common: their school.

Many say UW's unique placement in the city along with its ability to attract an extremely talented student population makes the university fertile ground for student entrepreneurship.

"Our students are as good or better than almost any place you want to find," Provost Patrick Farrell said. "Our students are very creative, [and] we try not to train that out of them."

Those talents show in the programs and competitions UW holds year after year, he said.

Innovation Days, an annual competition through the College of Engineering, is one such arena for students to strut their stuff.

O'Brien's FireSite and Younkle's TurboTap are just two examples of what the competition is all about, according to Jim Beal, director of external relations for the College of Engineering.

"Students have some of the best ideas but might not have the funding," he said. "There are a lot of people who say, 'Here's something I don't like,' but there's not a lot of people who say, 'Here's something I can do about it.'"

Andy Cohn, government and public relations manager for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, expressed similar sentiments.

According to Cohn, WARF receives roughly 400 inventions per year, and students are not strangers to the process.

"We have excellent students here and they are actively engaged in research, which is usually where inventions come from," he said, adding a number of UW graduate students and a handful of undergraduates are already on WARF patents.

But by no means is student entrepreneurship limited to invention.

Dan Olszewski, director of the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship at UW, said about 20 percent of graduates from the MBA entrepreneurship track go on to start their own business "day one, right out of school."

Olszewski added the tools for opportunity assessment provided by their education, coupled with an innovative nature, is the recipe for success.

That innovated nature inspired Anand Chhatpar to create a company called BrainReactions, which gathers college students to brainstorm ideas for large companies — primarily Fortune 500 — looking for fresh perspectives on problems in their businesses.

Asked why student input is so invaluable to his clients, Chhatpar said it is just "in their nature."

Beal echoed similar sentiments, saying students are at the forefront of technology and trends, and a freedom that allows them to push the limits of innovation.

"They just haven't been turned into machines yet," he said. "They're ready to say, 'let's make this work.'"