Sending good feelings is easy—a card or perhaps a nice basket of fruit. But sending not-so-good emotions is more difficult. Matt Bare feels your pain and wants to help.

Bare, a 2008 graduate who majored in entrepreneurship, has developed a business that lets you express yourself organically. His online novelty shop—PooYou—lets you send an irritating neighbor, a friend, or an annoying celebrity a light-hearted message along with an odorless, sanitary, biodegradable package of “poo” (worm-generated fertilizer) and a package of seeds.

In spring 2008, he bet his graduation on the viability of his business plan in the culmination of the capstone New Venture Creation course. A business panel decided whether he got an A and graduated or failed and had to try again next year.

But his plan was vetted before then. “It’s a risky business,” says Bare. “First, we’re testing it in a limited market to see what consumers think.”

Organizations across the state are already behind the idea. PooYou recently took honors at the Empowering Entrepreneurship competition, sponsored by Muncie’s Innovation Connector, and Collegiate Idol, sponsored by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and Techpoint. He also won $10,000 in the Nascent 500 Business Plan Challenge, where he had 500 seconds to pitch his business plan while zipping around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a limousine.

“The entrepreneurship program helped me develop my thought process,” says Bare. “You can’t follow every idea that you have. You have to come up with a filter in your mind that says, ‘OK, this is a Matt Bare opportunity, and this isn’t.’”

Bare bet his graduation date that PooYou is the right opportunity for him—and won.