Three years of hard work and dedication are coming to fruition for five Mississippi State University students as they prepare to move forward with their website, CampusKnot.com
 Hiten Patel, MSU alumni and CEO of “CampusKnot,” said he uses Blackboard as the primary way to view assignments, grades and essentially everything else involved with school aside from attending the class itself. However, where others saw flaws in the online system, Patel said he saw opportunities.  
Patel said he and four others worked for most of their college lives perfecting their own vision of what an Internet service such as Blackboard could be. 
Ira Hampton, senior biological engineering major and marketing manager of the website, said he has been there for the long haul.
“A lot of teachers around campus are complaining about how difficult it is to navigate around Blackboard. What CampusKnot is able to do is take all the difficulty out of it and make it more userfriendly,” Hampton said. “So they don’t have to go to a user manual or ITS to figure out how to use it.”
Those behind CampusKnot did not set out only to improve but to innovate.
Katja Walter, one of the minds behind CampusKnot.com said the website is an academic social networking platform.
“You could follow professors from other universities, and they could upload a cool article of something they are interested in,” Walter said. “So while you don’t really have the opportunity of having them there as a teacher, you can follow them and find out interesting things that are happening in the area they teach.”
The idea behind the social functionality of CampusKnot.com is not limited to linking students up to professors across the nation. According to Hampton, their primary focus is much closer to home. 
“We’re talking about in a classroom,” Hampton said. “You know the first day of class is awkward. You may not know this person or know that person. You’d rather message them than see them face-to-face.”
Hampton said CampusKnot.com  will automatically sort students into their university’s group, and by entering their course codes, students can then join specific class groups where they will be able to communicate easily between classmates and teachers.
“Groupme is pretty much the go to for group assignments,” Hampton said. “We’re taking Groupme out of the equation. You don’t need Groupme anymore, you have ‘CampusKnot.’”
  CampusKnot.com will also feature a shared calander system where people can upload and update information on anything from class assignments to events hosted by student organizations that everyone following the respective groups can view. 
“Since it is going to be campus-based and everyone uses it, you can just post it, and you don’t have to print it out and waste the paper, waste the money,” Hampton said. “It goes straight to CampusKnot, and when you post it everyone who is linked with Mississippi State University will get a notification saying ‘Hey, you need to go to this. This organization is hosting this event.’ I thought that was pretty cool, because I am always late, so I was like hey, I need that in my life right now.”
In addition to easy communication, CampusKnot will tie in several other utilities teachers often use to conduct their classes, such as a tool for in-class polling and uploading image galleries. They are also working on a mobile site, and are in the process of developing an app to go alongside the online service.
Students will be able to post books they wish to sell at their own prices as opposed to taking what they can get at a bookstore.  The team is also in the process of integrating CampusKnot.com with the online bookstore site Chegg.com, so students who are buying books can enter the title, edition, author or any other keyword and find the books required for their classes. 
If other students have listed that same book their posts will show up along with posts from Chegg.com with retail pricing information. 
Also, because it is linked, Walter said even if no one has posted a particular book in the area, students will be able to order the desired book from Chegg.com.
“We’re basically trying to help students out,” Walter said. “Bookstores can be so expensive for students and we just wanted to help.”
Patel said CampusKnot.com and those behind it take the desire to assist students further than helping even the marketplace.
“CampusKnot is a socially conscious business,” Patel said. “A certain amount of the revenue from CampusKnot will be going to a foundation to be utilized for educational purposes.”
The foundation it will contribute to is called ‘Beingstudent,’ and money it raises goes to buying things like textbooks and laptops for students in need and scholarships. 
Patel said he plans on generating revenue from the site from two sources, paid advertising and the job listing service where employers can pay to have openings that they want to fill with students posted on the site for entire campuses to see.
CampusKnot is ambitious, seeking to tie in many aspects of academic life and packaging it all together in a manner that is both user friendly and beneficial to the community. After three years of hard work, think tanks, mistakes and corrections the five MSU students are ready to see their project take off. 
“Hiten is pretty much the brain,” Hampton said. “He brought the idea about. Pretty much what Katja, Rahul, and me do is the marketing. We’re trying to get it on State campus. We’re trying to get it to take over.”
Early on, Patel said he had the idea for a better virtual classroom, but it was not until he started taking entrepreneurship classes and going to the entrepreneurship center that he realized it was something that could come to fruition. 
Now, CampusKnot.com is a legitimate startup. The website has a public relations team on payroll and also outsource a lot of the technical work to multiple companies. The also havesomeone who handles the bear mechanics of the site and another that designs the user interface. 
“We have one group that makes it look pretty and another that makes it work,” Walter said. 
A lot of the initial start up money came out of Patel’s pockets himself, but after the team assembled they started receiving funds from several locations.  A lot came from their success in several business competitions that had monetary prizes for those who rank to intended to be used as startup cash. 
Walter said another source of funding came from the student body themselves.
“The first day of class we had a tent set up on the drill field,” Walter said. “We had CampusKnot t-shirts and flash drives with the logo on it and students could view a short video about the site and if they thought campusknot was a good idea they could sign up as an investor or like on a PR team.”
Walter said they had a beta version completed a year ago and presented that the the entrepreneurship advisory board and got a lot of feedback.  
“If you look at it from one year ago to now it looks completely different,” Walter said. “They put a lot of work in over the summer so now we are at a point where this is how we want it. This is perfect.”
From the very beginning, Patel and the crew received advice and support. 
“We are thankful for the Mississippi state entrepreneurship advisory board for mentoring and motivating us,” Patel said. “They have an important place in our journey so far.”