Insight on Business

IN FOCUS { SMA L L B U S I N E S S } By Sharon Verbeten Personalizing memories LIVEyearbook reaches Facebook generation LIVEyearbook founders Dan Nickchen (left) and Don Noskowiak say the Neenah start-up is linking the standard school yearbook with the Internet, allowing students to customize their books. LIVEyearbook won the 2010 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest and was named a “Company to Watch” by the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Network. Nickchen. Under the LIVEyearbook model, “personalization is key. No one wants a cookie-cutter book.” The Neenah company’s soſtware product is provided free to schools, which still work with a yearbook staff to create a traditional yearbook. And while the bulk of the yearbook W hen Facebook started, its founder had the needs and wants of college students in mind. The team behind Greenville’s LIVEyearbook has adopted a similar approach, instead focusing on high school students – assisting them in creating customizable yearbooks. “The old model [for yearbooks] is one-size-fits-all,” says Don Noskowiak, president of LIVEyearbook. “We combine the tradition of print [with] technology. There’s a lot of flexibility and choice.” The company, launched last year, won the grand prize in the 2010 Wisconsin 48 | INSIGHT • May 2011 Governor’s Business Plan Contest, snaring $50,000 to roll out and refine their revolutionary ideas in yearbook production. It was also recently named one of three New North “companies to watch” by the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Network (see story on page 15). Revamping the standard Dan Nickchen and Todd DeNoyer both had career ties in the school industry when they founded the company in 2010. So they had seen the status quo of school yearbook production – and saw a better way, one sure to appeal to today’s tech-savvy teens. “Under the current model, [yearbook] sales are declining,” says is the same for everyone, students have the opportunity – using school- approved stored media images – to customize the book, for example, by adding more photos of themselves and their friends. “We become the conduit” for students to find more media and images to download, says Noskowiak. Even the once-popular activity of signing yearbooks has come of age: students can gather digital signatures, by invitation only. “We’re the first to combine the customization,” says Noskowiak. Online versions of the yearbook are viewable, and schools or organizations can also create “activity books,” such as one detailing, for example, the basketball team or drama club. Noskowiak sees these niche books as a huge potential for growth. And because pages can be proofed www. insightonbusiness .com MARYBE TH MATZEK

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