The best gig they could find was tutoring the Notre Dame football team on the finer points of calculus and computer programming. A thankless job to be sure, and it didn’t exactly pay the tab at the ol’ Linebacker Lounge. Tired of seeing all the piles of old textbooks sitting around the apartment, Kreece tried a hunch and put his roommate’s old books for sale on the Internet. The campus bookstore never paid much for used books, but perhaps he could sell them on the Internet and get more. (Buying and selling stuff on the Internet hadn’t gone mainstream yet). Even though it was the middle of the summer, the textbooks started selling like proverbial hotcakes. Xavier, ever the entrepreneur, knew a good thing when he saw one and proceeded to sell off his old textbooks and those of all his roommates’ who had fled and left their books behind. He became intrigued by the online book market, and wondered how he could find a lot more books.

A PRIZE-WINNING PLAN

Encouraged by the success of the book drive, the new partners decided to draft a business plan. They recruited their friend and classmate Jeff from the world of investment banking to help build the business. They envisioned a different kind of company with a built-in social benefit. By generating revenue to fund literacy, they would also earn profits to support and grow the company. And in funding literacy, they would help give struggling people the world over the skills and self-esteem necessary to thrive and succeed.

The three founders submitted the idea to a Notre Dame University business plan competition, and won “Best Social Venture.” With $7,000 in prize money and some guidance by a competition judge named David Murphy (who would later become CEO of the company), the entrepreneurs then set off to run Book Drives for Better Lives on campuses across the country.

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