For Matt Ackerson '09, just a few months out of Cornell, it's one big idea after another.

His Scrimple.com morphed into The S Card, which morphed into Blue Sky Local. Blueskylocal.com delivers coupons and promotions via e-mail and text messaging to customers when restaurateurs need them most -- on slow days.

Since launching five months ago, Ackerson said he has been working 16 to 18 hours a day.

So far, 18 restaurants use the service, 10 on Long Island, four in Ithaca -- two Subways, The Connection and Jack's Grill; other customers are in Detroit, Miami and Reno, Nev.

Ackerson, leader of the team that won Cornell's Big Idea entrepreneur contest in 2008, says building a business is an iterative process.

"You're not going to get it right the first time you try. You have to try something, step back and evaluate the results, make changes and then try again," he said.

Ackerson did just that with Scrimple.com, through which customers printed out coupons redeemable at dozens of local merchants.

"Scrimple's value proposition wasn't clear enough, our distribution method was unsustainable, and it was difficult to grow the business to other locations. Blue Sky Local's business model is the answer to those issues," Ackerson said.

Blue Sky Local caters to quick service and dine-in restaurants. By tracking the weather, slow times of day and other factors, it automatically delivers coupons to customers at times when sales might be slow.

Restaurants pay $99 a month to Blue Sky Local for it to send promotions by e-mail, text and Twitter to 300 customer; 1,000 customers for $199 a month and 3,000 customers for $299 month.

Based on its survey last year of 244 restaurants, Blue Sky Local found that the average restaurant annually loses $31,200 in potential revenue due to such factors as weather.

College of Engineering graduate Angel Villegas '09, Ackerson's business partner and Blue Sky Local's programmer, is based in Washington, D.C. Ackerson meets with Blue Sky Local's far flung five-person sales team by phone every Monday.

The ILR School's curriculum and electives across Cornell, Ackerson said, "helped prepare me to be an entrepreneur. You have to be open to so many faces -- programming, law, human resources, union, economics."

Starting a business can "seem like chipping away at a mountain," said Ackerson. "How best to work with other people, analyzing different business models, understanding the bigger picture behind what happens in a business -- it's fascinating."

"My ILR experience helped to make me a generalist capable of wearing many hats. That is essential to being an entrepreneur."