The man who epitomizes his own definition of entrepreneurship spoke at the University of Massachusetts Tuesday night to a group of young, aspiring business owners.
“My definition of an entrepreneur is when everybody around you thinks you’re crazy and you go ahead and do it,” said Jeff Taylor, UMass alumnus and founder and former CEO of Monster.com, a billion dollar job search website.
Taylor was invited as a guest speaker at a group called the Entrepreneurship Initiative (EI) which partners with Commonwealth College to have its members create ideas and teach them the critical skills to get started, according to its website.
“Jeff is the quintessential example of what a UMass student can do,” said Isenberg School of Management professor and Taylor’s longtime friend, Tom O’Brien.
Taylor, who described himself as “a student of life,” started his talk with his activities at UMass and how they shaped his entrepreneurial career.
In one of his first business initiatives, he got the names and addresses of the incoming freshman class from a “friend at Whitmore” and sent home letters advertising for a “freshman survival kit.”
Taylor made $3,000 his sophomore year from the sales of the kits which he stuffed with Snickers bars and other knick-knacks he felt freshmen might benefit from – making a grand total of $7,000 the three years he sold the packages.
“You have to come up with the ideas,” Taylor said. “And sometimes answer to the challenges.”
One of those business challenges came at The Massachusetts Daily Collegian.
Taylor worked at the newspaper during his first years at UMass – which had been losing money for over three decades. First, he joined as an advertising representative, where he sold ads in nearby Northampton. The following year, he became the advertising manager and then the next year, the business manager, where he felt he made a lasting impression as a businessman.
“I helped turn The Collegian profitable – it had been losing money for 36 years,” Taylor said.
In addition to working at The Collegian, being on the council of UMass’ Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, Taylor worked as a tour guide doing the “bullhorn” tour at 8 a.m. Saturday. He then went on to head the tour guide program.
However, Taylor felt the academic sting from being so involved on campus.
“I did all this shit and forgot to go to class,” he joked.
Taylor spent five-and-a-half years at UMass, from 1978 to 1983 before leaving without his degree to launch his career with his ultimate risk – Monster.com.
“I had this dream, a big idea – a monster idea,” he said.
Monster.com really came in the form of a dream. The idea came while he was half asleep thinking of ideas, like “The Monsterboard,” essentially a big bulletin board of job postings. Once the idea came, he spent 10 years marketing the company so, like today, 9 out of 10 people would know what the website was.
To put Monster on the map, Taylor and his team created a Super Bowl advertisement in 1999. In addition, he hired a team to create a crop circle featuring the “Trumposaurus” or the website’s mascot, right on the flight path into Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Monster was a sponsor for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, where the company fronted $15 million dollars for permission to be on the ground at the Olympics and the use of the Olympic rings in their commercials. Taylor and his team had people dressed as “trumposauruses” at the games, gave away thousands of free, Monster.com snowboarding hats and created a snowmaze.
Taylor’s snowmaze almost cost him. He hired a sand castle builder to construct it for him for the price of $90,000 with 10-foot walls. Unfortunately for the Monster.com team it was one of the warmest winters for a Winter Olympics and the walls melted until you could almost see over them. But a maze that turned out to be melting into puddles suddenly became free publicity for the company when Katie Couric and The Today Show gave the maze a five minute spot – what Taylor estimates to be worth about $5 million dollars.
Taylor charismatically told a number of stories, bursting out into the song “Roxanne” while pretending to think of his best ideas in the shower and imitating playing the bass guitar, but he had three main pieces of advice to give students.
“Pick a big market,” he said, “and change is happening, you can be apart of that change. And don’t let anyone tell you how long to take a shower. In the shower, you start solving problems.”
Taylor eventually returned to UMass to complete his undergraduate degree through the University Without Walls program and spoke at his own commencement.
Although Taylor left Monster.com in 2005, he is still taking on big initiatives, like Eons.com – a social networking site for baby boomers 55-years-old and older. In addition, he recently started Tributes.com in 2008, a site for obituaries resources. Taylor also has his own show on Sirius XM radio called Jefr Tale in which he plays his favorite kind of music – indie dance, house and tribal music.
But even with the money, fame and success of his business, Taylor – whose academic career was like “a gnarly ass line going all over” – said he hasn’t quite found that feeling of ultimate achievement.
“I haven’t found success,” he said. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”
Kate Olesin can be reached at kolesin@dailycollegian.com.
 "Photo: Kate Olesin")
