Mike Pronovost, a business student at Fresno State was at the White House last week with 100 young entrepreneurs. Lean startup like story.

Pronovost developed Powerband, a program that uses files stored in a virtual desktop to speed up Internet access. He developed the program working odd hours in a room in his parents’ house.

“What inspired me to start a business in the first place was that I’ve always been encouraged to be an entrepreneur,” Pronovost said. “I was really always into computers, so it was one of those things where I had worked with computers for a long time.”

Pronovost said that when he was 17, he worked at Dan Gamel’s RV Centers as its network administrator where he learned about computer networks.

“I didn’t really think of it becoming a business, I was just trying to find a new way of creating a network that was faster,” Pronovost said.

“From there I programed the first small prototype of [Powerband]. I kind of threw it out there to a few of the companies I was interested in partnering with,” Pronovost added. “At that point I hired some other programmers to help me put it together and from there it turned into a pretty big network.”

Powerband has big implications with slow Internet connections, as it speeds up the connection by compressing the data which is being transferred.

“It puts you onto a hosted cloud desktop. It compresses a lot of the data and ends up making the connection a lot faster than it’s supposed to be,” Pronovost said.

As the CEO of Pronovost Technologies, he has moved on from Powerband, which is currently undergoing a buyout, to other projects. Pronovost has numerous projects in the works from some of the connections with the software industries he has made.

via The Collegian » Fresno State student entrepreneur invited to the White House.