FlockU, for that *real* college education

If the term NARP is a mystery to you, if your definition of lit is something set on fire, then do not send your resumé to FlockU.com.

Because it means you're probably not in college, and FlockU is a website written by the college student, for the college student. Or, as the tagline for the new, well-financed Philadelphia region start-up succinctly sums up its mission: College Covered.

What does that mean? Teaching about life in very unvarnished fashion, sometimes using crude language - including words The Inquirer, as a family newspaper, does typically not publish.

Consider recent headlines on the King of Prussia-based site, where, its founders say, no topic is taboo: "The Five Stages of Receiving Nude Texts." "Why I'm Staying Single . . . For Now." "How Fallout 4 Can Get You Through Break." "6 Things Girls Actually Think About Your D- Pic."

Not censoring its contributors is the whole point of FlockU.com. That, and making money.

"We really want to avoid changing the voice of our writers," said Caroline Weller, 31, a Huffington Post veteran and now senior managing editor at FlockU.com, where writers are called flockers.

Don't get the wrong idea, FlockU's founders say: The idea isn't to produce crass entertainment, but to educate in a format and parlance that resonates with the college demographic. A recent look at the site promised pieces on "The Weirdness of Minimum Wage Job Interviews" and "Five Books You Should Read Before You Graduate," among other subjects.

"There truly wasn't an opportunity for college students to learn real-life lessons outside the classroom," said FlockU cofounder and CEO Josh Verne, 38, a successful serial entrepreneur, first in the furniture business and then in a financing start-up, workpays.me.

With $3 million in start-up capital - $600,000 of which was spent on website and mobile-technology development - Verne said he expects FlockU.com to start making money by March.

Verne never went to college, and his two kids are just 9 and 11 - too young for beer pong and to be turnt, millennial-speak for drunk. (By the way, a NARP is a nonathletic person.)

FlockU's other founder (and chief karma officer) is Jon Dorfman, who cofounded workpays.me with Verne in 2012. The company was sold two years later to Global Analytics Holding.

Their foray into serving the college crowd was unintentional at first. After the sale of workpays.me, Verne wanted to create something.

"Every article I read, I kept hearing 'millennial,' " he said.

His plan was to provide some type of financial-wellness service for college students centered on affordable shopping through a sort of online Costco - until he met Zanny Oltman, who suggested he had lost his mind thinking he could compete against big-box retailers.

Oltman, 41, was vice president of strategic partnerships at Destination Maternity Corp., and is perhaps even more well-known to Philadelphians as the little girl featured years ago in the "There's that news van again" commercials for Action News.

With a bachelor's degree in television production, an MBA in marketing, and a background as a publicist and production manager in TV, Oltman suggested that what made more sense was partnering with retailers to give college students a way to express themselves and learn from one another. Verne convinced her to join FlockU as president.

For Weller, the appeal of migrating to FlockU after managing original video for the Huffington Post was the opportunity to craft a start-up's editorial strategy.

To plot a course, FlockU's creators visited college campuses around the country, asking students what interested them and what information they needed and wanted. That led to a pivot from the intended shopping website to one driven by content.

The name itself was an obvious play on words, selected after some staff joking sessions. "Flock Yourself" is the name of the company's Instagram account.

Headquarters is 5,000 square feet in an unremarkable-

looking building in a suburban office park. FlockU has tried to millennialize its space with open work stations - there are 19 employees in addition to more than 100 contributing flockers - and a treadmill, a massage chair, and a hair salon. Oh, and sheep outlines on the walls.

About 75 percent of FlockU.com's content is from college students. The rest is advice from professionals. What helps make it unique is the flockers' free rein, Verne said.

"There are other sites where there are student contributors, but they come highly edited," he said.

FlockU pays its student writers $50 per published post, usually about 300 words, and up to $100 for videos.

Brevity is critical, Weller said. College students "love lists. They love getting to the point," she said.

Since its beta launch in November, FlockU's content has run the gamut: virginity, eating disorders, homesickness.

Would one of the more repulsive words to describe a body part (or a nasty woman) survive what is FlockU's typically light editing to clean up grammar?

"If it's in context of a story or important in getting a point across . . . but not on a regular basis," Weller said. "We are reaching 18- to 24-year-olds who use language. They don't star it or bleep it out. If you are offended by our site, then go somewhere else."

It's a philosophy that FlockU investor David Adelman accepts - to a point.

"I don't want to be assaulted with something raunchy," said Adelman, who, at 43, is well-versed in the college scene as president and CEO of Philadelphia-based Campus Apartments, housing college students for 20 years.

What impresses Adelman about FlockU is that it offers something he has not seen anywhere else: "an education of the self that isn't taught in school."

As he was to workpays.me, Eric Siegel is a business adviser to FlockU. Success, he said, will depend on "driving interest and audience growth in what is a crowded digital-media space."

Verne "has been very clever in targeting the audience he's decided to target," said Siegel, president of Siegel Management Co. in Bryn Mawr. "It is a very desirable and monetizable audience. I'm not familiar with anything else that has a college audience so squarely in the crosshairs."

Will FlockU deliver financially? Oltman cited a variety of potential revenue sources, including content integration, native advertising, email marketing, and data licensing.

Julia Donald, 20, of Kimberton, a psychology major at Dartmouth College and a FlockU contributor who mostly writes about sex and relationships, agrees that the website stands apart.

"It gives flockers the opportunity to speak," Donald said. "I think that's huge."

dmastrull@phillynews.com

215-854-2466

@dmastrull