Nick Malinowski's website, myunitext.com, allows Mason students to buy and sell used textbooks.
Nick Malinowski knows his first couple of years out of college will be base-building years, where he gets his feet on the ground and builds an economic foundation.
After that, his entrepreneurial spirit is likely to take over.
“I want to be in control of running things myself,” the George Mason University junior said.
The marketing major is proactive in that sense, with myunitext.com, a website he created with which Mason students can buy and sell used textbooks.
Students advertise their books on the website. Buyers send payments to Unitext, which holds the money in escrow until the book is exchanged.
For the service, and to maintain the website, Malinowski said he keeps 10 percent of the sale.
Forty students have listed items, he said.
For now, the website is Mason-specific and focuses on textbooks. But Malinowski said he has plans to expand to other colleges and other products, such as appliances and clothes.
“It takes some time to really engage the market,” Malinowski said. “We’ll start at George Mason until we get more proof of concept and then look to expand.”
“He keeps pushing. He’s relentless. He’s driven,” said Lisa Gring-Pemble, an associate professor in Mason’s School of Business. “He’s also great at communicating his ideas. I sit there and say, ‘Yes, that’s a student we claim.’ ”
A member of the Honors College and a defender on the men’s soccer team, Malinowski, as a sophomore, received the Peter N. Stearns Provost Student Athlete Award, given to students who have completed 38 credit hours and maintained at least a 3.75 GPA.
“Coming to D.C. and experiencing the plethora of different cultures and experiences, that has really helped me grow,” said Malinowski, who is minoring in information technology and Spanish. “And the amount of resources at the university I’m able to make use of is another one of the things that is great about college.”
Malinowski wants his internet business to be another of those resources.
“Even if this weren’t to take off, I definitely will learn a lot from it,” Malinowski said. “Even as a learning experience, it fuels the hunger, gives you a little bit more of the drive to keep going.”
“I’m a college athlete,” he added. “When you lose a game, you always want to come back and win the next one. It’s almost like a driving force.”
Malinowski, a defender on Mason's men's soccer team, received the Peter N. Stearns Provost Student Athlete Award. Photo by Rafael Suanes/ George Mason Athletics.