Duke's graduates Taylor Mingos, left, and Dan Englander created Shoeboxed.com, a downtown Durham business that organizes customers' receipts electronically. Photo credit: Megan Morr

Durham's Research Triangle area is known for its vibrant business community and proximity to world-renowned research universities, where fresh ideas for start-up companies and new ventures abound.

This month, Duke students with new business ideas will get a leg up during the second annual Entrepreneurship Week at Duke University, Nov. 17-23, part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. Workshops, speakers and competitions are designed to inspire students and give them hands-on experience on how to take a "cool idea" to the commercial marketplace.

"E-week is an easy access point for students who just want to dabble in entrepreneurship and don't want to take a whole course up front," says Howie Rhee, managing director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Duke's Fuqua School of Business. "Maybe they will get connected with another student or with an idea."

Duke students developing innovative ideas predates E-week. One student who took an idea from his Duke dorm room to downtown Durham is Taylor Mingos, '07, chief executive officer of Shoeboxed.com.

Mingos' idea is a simple one: Scan customers' receipts and organize them online to help clients keep track of expenses for accounting purposes, taxes or personal organization. The larger vision, he says, is anticipating the day when all receipts go paperless.

"The challenge right now is to position ourselves to get [to the next level]," Mingos says. "We're building our brand around receipts, getting our foot in the door."

As a sophomore studying abroad in Berlin, Mingos helped develop StudiVZ, a student networking site that beat out more than a dozen of its competitors to become the German equivalent of Facebook. He used the money and experience he garnered with StudiVZ to help finance the start-up Shoeboxed.com -- a business idea he conceived at Duke.

Mingos is just one example of a burgeoning number of Duke student entrepreneurs and companies based on Duke technologies, that are stoking the local economy and building the Triangle's reputation as a favorable environment for business start-ups.

As an MBA student at Fuqua, Jonathan Gindes,'03, took a class that teamed him up with two Duke medical inventors. They had discovered protein molecules that can bind together foreign substances like two-sided tape.

"I don't have a medical background, but I found it very interesting and I stuck with it even after the class ended," Gindes says. "It was fun and when I graduated I decided I wanted to try to do this full-time."

Gindes then helped develop the business strategy for Affinergy, a company in Durham that develops biotechnologies. He negotiated a technology license from Duke and recruited a senior management team that includes a Duke professor and alumna. Affinergy is currently developing a peptide "glue" to coat orthopedic implants, such as metal hip replacements, with infection-fighting antibiotics.

"This is a great place to be involved in entrepreneurship," says Gindes, who is originally from New Jersey. "It's a lot easier when there is momentum and critical mass in a region," he adds, citing the Triangle's cluster of universities, technology companies and venture capital. "The cost of living here is also very favorable relative to other locations like Boston or Silicon Valley."

One aim of events such as E-week is to pair people who have good ideas with others across the university who have the skills and know-how to market those ideas.

Some sessions will be open to the public, including Wednesday's Duke Start-Up Challenge, when Duke students will pitch their business ideas to compete to win seed money. The public is also welcome to Thursday's speaker day, which will feature a talk by Duke-Durham entrepreneur Will Pearson '01, author and co-founder of the online magazine, mental_floss.

Like Mingos and Gindes, Jed Carlson,'05, will be mentoring students during E-week and says he's pleased to see the emphasis on entrepreneurship at his alma mater.

Carlson's company, ReverbNation, develops web marketing tools for more than a quarter of a million musicians worldwide out of an office across from the old Durham Bulls Athletic Park. While his software was designed with indie bands in mind, his tools have been so successful that major label artists such as Madonna, Kenny Chesney and Los Lonely Boys use them, too.

I wish they had E-week when I was there, but I'm happy for the students," he says. "Howie Rhee should be credited for a lot of the resurgence."

Meanwhile, Mingos has some advice for students who are thinking about doing a startup.

"There are so many smart students at Duke with smart ideas. My idea is just to do it. You're a student, you have nothing to lose."