Entrepreneurs from Uptown aim to sell 1 million t-shirts

by Sarah Blaskovich

DALLAS — Recent Southern Methodist University grads Blaine Iler and Ben Hurt took their diplomas and went bright-eyed into the world, ready for 9-to-5 employment. What you're about to hear is all to familiar: Despite their experience and excitement, Iler's job offers didn't pan out like planned. Hurt was equally jaded. The economic downturn hit their generation especially hard, yet the tireless twosome weren't prepared to take it.

They looked to their entrepreneurial ventures from college. Many have taken this route: Statistics from the "Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity" show that the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 2008 had 420 entrepreneurs per 100,000 people. In comparison, Houston has significantly fewer. Dallas also outranks the Texas average.

Iler and Hurt decided there had to be “at least a million people” who were experiencing their plight. And the number stuck. “You don't have to accept things,” Iler says. “You can start a business. And oh, by the way, you can start it with a philanthropic purpose. There's got to be a million people thinking the same way.”

The giving-back mentality has defined their new business, launched July 4. Dare to Give, as it's called, aims to sell 1 million t-shirts with a slogan that reads “life. liberty. happiness.” They leaned on past businesses -- both the success of Iler's software biz called BravoLog and the failure of Hurt's past t-shirt biz – and decided they had the know-how to make this thing work.

“We like to learn by doing,” Iler says. “And we made mistakes in our other businesses. But wouldn't it be great if we could have everyone in America united around making things better, thinking outside the box, and helping philanthropically?” By wearing the shirt, they hope people will view it as an outward symbol of success through entrepreneurialism. Iler and Hurt are selling the shirts for $17.76 -- a throwback to the American Revolution -- to unite 1 million people under the entrepreneurial umbrella.

And now the numbers: Half of their profits will go to a variety of charities. Iler says philanthropy is “one of the things that makes this country great.” He's been a volunteer EMT for several years and recently joined a prison entrepreneurship group, where he'll teach inmates to write business plans if they choose to start their own business when they're released. His partner, Hurt, has also been heavily involved in volunteerism, and the two decided that their business would only succeed if it proved to other entrepreneurs that humanitarianism is as important as hard cash.

The kickback for Iler and Hurt, if they sell 1 million shirts and give half to charity, is around $5 to $7 million after taxes.

About 50 shirts have been sold thus far. Iler has an agreement with the American Heart Assciation and plans to establish national partnerships with other charities. They'll give a direct contribution as shirts are sold -- as opposed to paying out after they're all sold. He also wants to do several iterations of the shirt, changing it up for college students at SMU, or for St. Patrick's Day, or for a Susan G. Komen event, for instance. (All big Dallas things, as you know.)

So here starts their big push as they share their message: “This is a story of two college kids facing a recession and doing something about it -- instead of sitting back and waiting for things to get better,” Iler says. “Entrepreneurship is the answer.”