Clemson student Adam Witty’s entrepreneurial spirit has him knocking out the rungs of the corporate ladder instead of climbing up them one by one — all the while maintaining his academic obligations. A junior marketing major and Spiro Fellow, Witty is the creative business mind behind TicketAdvantage™ Inc., an online secondary market ticket exchange for season ticket holders and single game buyers.

TicketAdvantage’s custom ticketing system offers single game buyers premium season ticket seating that would otherwise not be available. It facilitates an exclusive Web community that provides safe, secure and private transactions between buyers and sellers.

From Clemson football to professional sports to rock concerts, TicketAdvantage.com has the major event world covered.

Witty’s inspiration for the business came from watching Orlando Magic tickets go unused. “I remember seeing dad throw away Magic tickets because he couldn’t attend the game, and he couldn’t find anyone else on such short notice to use them,” says Witty.

With the help of professors, mentors and friends, Witty put the pieces of his business puzzle together. He developed the concept in his Clemson dorm room and launched it on Nov. 29, 2001. He now manages the operation from his apartment with the help of three other young Clemson businessmen.

Fellow student Lucas Waschkowski is the marketing czar, serving as developer and creator of all marketing initiatives. Computer engineering alumnus Ryan Dodd ’01 is the business’s chief software architect, responsible for all front-end software creation and implementation. Another computer engineering alumnus Cal Stephens ’01 is the chief technical officer, responsible for all hardware and back-end technology development.

“I am just one small part of TicketAdvantage,” says Witty. “None of this would have happened without the support, direction and brilliance of the people working with me.”

An invaluable amount of that support has come from Clemson’s Spiro Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership in the College of Business and Behavioral Science and a host of Clemson faculty, mentors and business leaders.

Initial direction came from the Spiro Center, which helps student inventors and entrepreneurs with market analyses and business planning. The center also conducts a mentoring and counseling program for linking entrepreneurs with experienced business executives. Witty was a participant in the Spiro Fellows program, administered by the Spiro Center. As part of his Fellows experience, he was encouraged, through course work and cooperative education, to plan and launch his venture.

“Adam is one of those rare students who has the creativity, strategic insight and tenacity to be a successful entrepreneur at a very early age,” says Caron St. John, director of the Spiro Center. “He has extraordinary communication skills, too, which has helped him sell others on his vision for TicketAdvantage.com.”

Business leaders who serve on TicketAdvantage’s management team include Pat Williams, co-founder and senior vice president of the Orlando Magic, and Paul Friel, general manager of internal auditing for Potomac Electric Power Company.

Clemson scholars and experts on the team include Neill Cameron, vice president for advancement; Greg Pickett, marketing department chair; Daniel Benjamin, economics professor, author and researcher; and Robert McCormick, BB&T Scholar and economics professor; and Neill Cameron, vice president for advancement.

Word of the innovative business is spreading quickly. Witty and the business have been featured in many media outlets across the country including the Orlando Sentinel and the Orlando Business Journal, Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal, the National Commission on Entrepreneurship newsletter, Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Entrepreneur.com” and FOX 5’s “Good Day Atlanta.”

Earlier this year, Witty and Waschkowski appeared on FOX Sports Net as winners of “30 Seconds of Fame” competition.

Witty and the TicketAdvantage team’s latest award is the 2002 South Carolina Collegiate EntrepreneurTM award. The award is a part of the North American Collegiate Entrepreneur AwardTM program founded by St. Louis University in Missouri.

Witty and the guys at TicketAdvantage hope to hear from plenty of Clemson football fans this fall who have tickets to buy or sell. Visit the Web at www.TicketAdvantage.com, go to “Keyword” in the upper right-hand corner and type in “Clemson” to see education in action.

Clemson’s Spiro Center sponsors and coordinates both the state and Central Atlantic regional collegiate entrepreneur competitions each year, soliciting nominations from all colleges and universities in the region and arranging for independent judging by business service providers and officials with the U.S. Small Business Administration. For more information about the Spiro Center or the competition, call 864-656-7235 or visit the Web at www.clemson.edu/spiro.