Connecting college campuses.

Jaja Jackson wires rah-rah circuit for customized Web services 

Some ideas jump off drawing boards. Others evolve from long, tedious meetings. But the beginnings of Mascot Network can be traced to the scribbles on a napkin in a Harvard Square restaurant.

There had to be a way, mused Jaja Jackson, a few years removed from his days as a Harvard Business School student, to get ideas, news, event announcements, and other information across a college campus without having to literally walk across it with a megaphone and a handful of flyers.

From the scribbles that Jackson and co-founder Jason Palmer mulled over on that napkin in 1998 came the idea for Mascot Network (www.mascotnet work.com), a company that now provides more than 80 colleges and universities with an array of Web-based services that support the needs of students, faculty, staff, and administrators. At the ripe old age of 28, Jackson is now president of a company that employs 125 people.

Mascot Network's aim is to improve students' college experience by making sure they have access to the information they need, says Jackson. "The institution's No. 1 customer is the student," he adds.

Jackson noted that in the 1980s, colleges and universities were among the first institutions to have high-speed, high-volume connections to the Internet. What he and Palmer, now the CEO of Mascot Network, saw was that these institutions often did not make the best use of the resources they had. "There's a big difference between having the pipes and having the content students need," says Jackson.

Mascot Network is more than just another pretty Web portal. What makes it different is personalization. Users fill out a one-page registration form from which an ID card that lists their interests is created. The ID card allows them to control how much of their information is made available to others.

Jackson says he is particularly proud to have recently signed on Alabama A&M University, one of five historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) Mascot has wired. The others are Jackson State, Morehouse, Grambling State, and Shaw.

Many of the HBCUs have limited resources, says Jackson, but they recognize the need for African American students to bridge the digital divide. Mascot Network gives a stipend to two students on each campus, providing them with exposure to its business and the opportunity to contribute to their campus.

The Mascot Network Web portal offers links to official student organizations as well as unofficial "common interest" groups. Each group can have a members-only online area as well as a public bulletin board. Professors can use Mascot Network to distribute book lists and exam schedules and set up appointments with students.

The road to the debut of Mascot Network wasn't easy for Jackson and Palmer, who initially funded the venture with their credit cards. Mascot Network eventually received $11.7 million in funding from investors. To date, the company has netted $23.7 million in investment dollars and expects to have revenues nearing $300 million by 2004.

Technically speaking, Mascot Network is an application service provider (ASP). While each network is customized for each campus, the software is run and maintained on Mascot Networks servers in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This setup lets educational institutions keep their current Websites and obviates the need to purchase new hardware. Cost of the program varies depending on the number of students served and the type of services provided; prices range from $25,000 to $100,000 for larger campuses and $10,000 to $40,000 for smaller campuses.

"It's designed specifically to enhance the resources those schools have and provide them with a lifetime customer relationship tool," says Jackson. Users can access local campus service from any Internet-linked computer via the Mascot Network site (www.mascot.com).

Jackson attributes much of his success to the support he got from INROADS Inc. (www.inroadsinc.org), a nonprofit organization that helps develop the talents of students of color so that they're ready for the business world when they graduate from college.

With a mother who is a K-12 teacher and a father who was a professor at Ohio State University, Jackson has been immersed in education for much of his life. "I understand the needs of the students and the institutions that serve them," says Jackson.