Building on an entrepreneurship background
Meet Neal Miglani, a TU student entrepreneur and self-taught web designer, who parlayed experience in his family's business to running one of his own.
By Megan Bradshaw on November 19, 2017
Neal Miglani 鈥�20, Information Technology
Tell me about your family and where you鈥檙e from.
I鈥檓 from India. I live with my mom and my sister. I鈥檝e been to every type of school you can think of鈥擨 went to a Christian school in kindergarten then I went to a Quaker school, Sidwell Friends, in Washington, D.C., until sixth grade. After that, my parents got divorced and they sent me and my sister to boarding school in India for about a year. I finished middle school and high school in public school in Potomac, Maryland, where I鈥檓 from. My sister is older than me; she is pre-med at UPenn.
What made you pick Towson University?
The people I met I really liked. It was instinct too, and it made sense financially. I just really like the environment I was coming into when I toured campus. It is a beautiful school; I really like Stephens a lot. It鈥檚 one of my favorite buildings here.
Tell me something about TU that you consider to be a hidden gem.
The West Village dorms. Those are definitely my favorite. I lived there freshman year, and it was amazing. My summer going into senior year [of high school], I lived in University of Pennsylvania dorms because I was doing an internship at Wharton Business School. After that, I felt like I was living in a hotel. West Village is very clean, very nice, very modern-looking and everyone there was cool.
Tell me about your internships.
I鈥檝e worked for , a huge marketing company that does the marketing for Hilton, the Redskins, and the Eagles. I was already running my business in high school, where I went to school with the CEO鈥檚 son. He told her about me, I had an interview and then I spent my senior year working for them. My school had a program where half the day, you took classes and the other half of the day, you worked at an area company. My internship at Wharton in 2015 was focused on 鈥淭he future of advertising in 2020.鈥� I spent about three weeks there. I learned a lot about how people use advertising and how technology is always changing. [Advertising] is ending up to be like what we talked about during the internship.
What inspired you to start your business?
When I was a sophomore in high school, my family needed to upgrade our restaurant鈥檚 website, and every agency we went to asked $50,000鈥�$60,000 just for marketing stuff. I couldn鈥檛 believe it could be that expensive to make a website, so my mom told me to make one and she鈥檇 pay me. I went on YouTube and taught myself how to program using tutorials. Two to three months later, I launched the site. My mom told her friends I made the site, and when one of her friends was starting her own business, she offered me $500 to make her website. I was a sophomore in high school, so I was like, 鈥淥f course I鈥檒l do it.鈥� Slowly I started building my network. Out of nowhere started, and now I have clients for $5,000鈥�$6,000 at a time. I work with companies all over Baltimore, D.C., and Virginia. I鈥檝e worked with restaurants and night clubs, and now I鈥檝e started a new service鈥攎icro-influencer marketing. Essentially, we work with college-age students with over 2,500 followers and a good presence on social media and get them free products in exchange for talking about it on social media. We鈥檙e working with a lot of Towson students as well. There are so many that have that social media presence.
With an entrepreneurship background, what made you want to combine that with coding and computers?
I鈥檝e loved computers since I was a child. It鈥檚 always been my passion. Then I learned about businesses. I worked at my restaurant since I was 13 years old. I was able to learn how a business works, how my family makes money and how hard it is. That taught me a lot about respect for hard work. I credit a lot of that to my success right now.
What do you do for fun 麻豆色播?
I鈥檓 in Sigma Alpha Mu; I鈥檓 the treasurer. I work a lot for them as well. I love spending time with my friends鈥攇oing out to eat, hanging out, just doing normal college stuff.
Neal's profile is the first of a series featuring three Towson University student
entrepreneurs in recognition of National Entrepreneurship Week.