If You Build It . . .

They heeded the call of entrepreneurship two years ago, and now inventors George Searle and Humphrey Chen are right on track with their Wayne, Pennsylvania, interactive music information and retail company, ConneXus Corp.

"We expect big things from this," says Searle, 33, who met Chen, 29, when the two were students at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "There's a large segment of the [music-buying public] whose needs are currently not well-served by existing distribution. That's our target market."

Searle and Chen created a product called *CD (pronounced "Star CD") that enables radio listeners to use their cellular phones to find out the name of the song they're listening to. "*CD automatically gives you the name of the song, the name of the artist and the name of the album [featuring that song]," says Searle.

Sound like a good idea? Searle and Chen certainly think so--and are planning to test-market their patent-pending technology early next year.

Will the partners revolutionize the music-buying process? Stay tuned.

This article was originally published in the December 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: If You Build It . . ..