Carson High grads hawk coffee on grounds it is sound tech business

C.J. Milholland and Hunter Haskin, a couple of Carson High School graduates now in their 20s, are budding technology entrepreneurs hawking coffee over the Internet.The co-founders of SimpleCoffeeClub.com, Milholland and Haskin are just more than two weeks into their online venture and still looking for their first club members.“Nobody has signed up yet, sadly,” Milholland said, but he was upbeat about Internet connections and social media prospects for spreading the word without the need for a huge investment.“We’ve been going about 15 days,” he said last week. He said already they have 55 Twitter followers, a couple or three emails daily and a couple or more telephone calls weekly. The investment involved is minimal, except for the time, he indicated.“That’s one of the cool things abut companies like this,” Milholland said. He said the pair invested about $1,000 and he has 250 hours into the business firm, Haskin perhaps 150 hours.Milholland said his firm works with area coffee roasters to provide customers with coffee, among them Blind Dog Coffee Co. based in Gardnerville and Wood-Fire Roasted Coffee Co. in Reno. “Our service-based company will provide our clients with a different one- pound package of fresh coffee each month,” the start-up firm said in a news release.Milholland, 22, said he and his partner, 21, launched the company on Jan. 2, making it the first coffee startup of 2013.Milholland reconnected with his high school by joining an advisory tech panel at Carson High School in 2011. Since graduation, he has taken college courses and worked as a sound technician in Reno in the entertainment field, but now is concentrating with his co-founder on the Internet coffee company. “We both serve on the CHS Technical Advisory Committee,” he said. He said both he and Haskin have extensive experience with technology, boasting a dozen or more combined years working on tech projects.