A common story can be found in the first chapter of countless tales of entrepreneurship and inspiration. A few inspired individuals recognize a problem and take it upon themselves to remedy the situation.

The problem, quite simply, was that students with a business idea lacked access to developers with the necessary skills to turn an idea into a reality. VentureStorm’s current COO, Tyler Denk, and current CEO, Taylor Johnson, encountered this issue while working on a music discovery application, JukeTree.

“We believed JukeTree had a ton of potential,” said Denk, “and it was extremely frustrating to believe in an idea, attempt to pursue it, but fall short due to the difficulties of launching an idea on a college student’s budget.”

They had a hunch that they were not the only student entrepreneurs who couldn’t find developers on their campuses.

“It just made sense,” said Johnson, ”if we were having this problem, others were too, and we wanted to provide a solution to help. After asking around, it turned out almost all the other entrepreneurs in our class were ‘still looking for a developer.’ ”

When the JukeTree door shut, a VentureStorm door opened. The two set out to create a “collaborative platform that connects student entrepreneurs and student developers locally on their campus to bring ideas to market,” said Denk.

With a new goal in mind, Denk and Johnson began to fill out their team. They first tapped Taylor’s “uglier twin” (his words) Tommy Johnson, 21, to join them.

The team’s first objective was dauntingly simple: name the company. Like many fleeting moments of creative inspiration and brilliance, theirs came during Qdoba’s notorious “half-off burrito Wednesdays,” where Taylor’s Quiet Storm Surf Shop t-shirt inspired the team to settle on the name VentureStorm.

“We really started from scratch,” said Tommy Johnson, “we all had some basic programming skills, but being able to build the website on our own took a lot of commitment.”

The team utilized popular website builder Squarespace – a startup created by a University of Maryland alumnus – to create a prototype for their company and solidify their image. Despite the first site’s shortcomings, the team received incredible feedback on their idea, including numerous requests from entrepreneurs interested in using the site. In a matter of weeks, 50 developers signed up.

“Putting up the test website was the best thing we could have done,” said Taylor Johnson. “We proved we would be able to sell our vision.”

Approaching the end of the fall 2014 semester, the team re-affirmed the campus-wide need for exactly what VentureStorm could provide. With a newly invigorated drive, Denk and the Johnson’s company expanded, adding Ephraim Rothschild, a very talented developer.

“My friend introduced me to Taylor and told me he was working on this new platform called VentureStorm,” said Rothschild, 20, VentureStorm’s current chief technology officer. “The crazy thing is that I had a similar idea; it couldn’t have been better timing.” The addition of Rothschild sparked the team’s development wing. Planning on launching their newly updated site, timing became a factor.

“In early January [2015], the site had all of the core functionality we really needed,” said Tommy Johnson, noting the ability to upload a project, search the project database and message other users on the site. “Despite its elementary functionality, the site still looked like someone copy and pasted it from a Word document.”

Weeks away from re-launching their site, there was still one box to be checked. In a world where online appearance and accessibility reign supreme, VentureStorm lacked an aesthetic image that was as cohesive and unified as their business plan.

Enter Akash Magoon, an 18-year-old freshman at the time, and an experienced developer and Internet entrepreneur. Akash had worked on a few software teams in the past and had experience scaling small startups. Weeks after joining the VentureStorm team, Akash, the new chief information officer, rebuilt the front-end and flow of the platform, strongly focusing on delivering a great product and user experience.

Excited, yet tempered with nervous anticipation, the VentureStorm team re-launched their site in April. Within three weeks, 150 entrepreneurs and 120 developers signed up to access VentureStorm’s unique pathway of communication. With 20 projects underway thus far, connections between entrepreneurs and developers have only just begun. Feedback for the site has been overwhelmingly positive as the team looks to pick up speed and take the university by storm.

“It has definitely been rewarding to see how much value we are able to deliver to our users,” said Magoon. "Our goal is to foster entrepreneurship not only campus to campus, but city to city, and lower the barriers of building the next billion dollar tech ventures.”

With a successful launch in the rear-view mirror, the team looks toward the future.

The VentureStorm team spent the summer in College Park, Maryland, working as members of the Terp Startup Incubator sponsored by the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. Working hours on end to integrate an array of new and improved features for enhanced collaboration, the team just launched a new and improved version of their platform.

“We hope to evolve as our customers do,” said Taylor Johnson. “We want to spread to universities across the country and help people just like us. We are currently undergoing some exciting updates to our website, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.”