Community Corner
College Student Heads Award-winning Business
In the Bay area we're used to hearing about 20-somethings starting their own tech companies. Adam Swart is blazing a different trail.
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Written by Beatrice Karnes
Climbing the mountain of success is a steep ascent for any young adult.
It’s been an especially tough trek for new college graduates since the beginning of the Great Recession. The avalanche of unemployment obliterated well-worn paths to jobs, forcing graduates into prolonged job searches or positions all-wrong for their education.
Adam Swart, who grew up in Palo Alto, wasn’t going to let that happen to him.
He’s started his own business, Crowds on Demand, while still a student at UCLA.
His idea is unique—make clients feel like A-list celebrities complete with paparazzi, security and a fawning crowd. He was struck by inspiration while on a trip, “I was getting off the plane in Estonia and I noticed some VIPs getting a hero's welcome at the airport,” said Swart. “Then I realized, I had no idea who they were! I just assumed that they were extremely important. So, I got to thinking, why can't there be a business that allows everybody to experience what it's like to be treated like a celebrity.”
Who would hire such a business?
To start with, B-list celebrities hoping to make it onto the A-list.
If Crowds on Demand can cause a stir in the right setting, real paparazzi will turn their lenses on the client.
Lately though, tourists trying to experience Hollywood like a movie star have discovered the company.
According to Swart, “We were rated by China's exclusive Shanghai Travelers Club as the ‘World's Best Luxury Lifestyle Experience of 2013.’ The award is a testament to the fact that we work with clients from start to finish to plan experiences of a lifetime.”
‘World’s Best’—not bad considering the company is still a startup, having been founded in October 2012. For such a young company, it’s already operating in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Las Vegas, New York, and Washington D.C.
Crowds on Demand also considers requests for special events in other cities.
The Bay Area—really? Turns out that the star treatment works in the business world as well.
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