"It's a scary thing to quit a job and start a business," Allred says, describing the path of a true entrepreneur. "You have to be comfortable with uncertainty and risk. You frequently have to make major decisions based on very little information."

Allred, by the way, is loving every minute of it. "I'm exhausted - in a good way."

He's part of the Junto Entrepreneurship Program, a fledgling project designed to sprout young entrepreneurs and reap their ideas. Being in Junto means Allred, a finance grad from Brigham Young University, is not all alone on that high wire.

Four other budding entrepreneurs are on Allred's team. They each have a stake in his business and he will have a stake in theirs.

Modern-day Junto, based on a mutual improvement club created by founding father Benjamin Franklin, is the creation of Greg Warnock, a managing director at vSpring, a Salt Lake-based venture capital firm. Warnock, a child entrepreneur himself, ferrets out Junto candidates, many still in college, then winnows the groups down to five-partner teams. This summer kicks off the second round of Junto, which began in 2004.

After teams are selected, Warnock plugs them into a network of successful entrepreneurs. He also arranges for each member to have $50,000 to put into their companies - along with any other capital they can raise.

In return, the Junto members are expected to throw their ambition, talent and lives into the project. Completely. It's no surprise that Junto has all the visceral excitement and drama of reality television's "The Apprentice" - without the cameras.

Each member is expected to do nothing for the next year to 18 months except incubate business concepts. No job, no school, not even much family time. The Junto exists to cook up business schemes.

"I have this voice in the back of my head screaming, 'Go! Go! As fast as you can!' " says 2005 Junto member Matt Bills. "We have to be in a position in our lives that we can live out of a duffel bag. You have to have very few liabilities and claims on your time."

Entrepreneurial experiment: Junto, says Warnock, is an experiment in "pure form entrepreneurship."

"Increasingly, I am concluding it's not about the money," he says. "It's not about the business idea. It's not about timing. In this pure form entrepreneurship, it's about the entrepreneur."

That led Warnock, a pragmatic businessman, to the question at the heart of Junto: "What is the optimal mix of talent and resources to launch promising start-up companies?"

The test subjects in the experiment are, of course, the Junto partners. And that makes perfect sense to Bills.

"We either have had some success in business or we have the personality that makes it very apparent that we will have that success," he said. "Junto is about betting on the jockey instead of the horse."

As a way to ensure cooperation among highly competitive people and as a hedge against individual failure, each Junto partner has a stake in the others' business.

"The logic behind Junto is if I have a piece of ownership in five companies, when the dust settles, I'll have something," Allred says. "Even if my company fails."

Not surprisingly, considering its founder's philosophy, the $50,000 stake per partner seldom comes up in discussions of Junto.

"Money isn't at the heart of it, nor are the ideas," says 2004 Junto member Ryan Money. "It's bringing these ideas to fruition."

Support system: Allred says Junto is most important as a catalyst.

"There are lots of people who dream of starting their own businesses, but very few get around to it. It requires a leap of faith. To be able to undertake the leap with other people is immensely helpful."

Of course, Junto's mentor network is valuable to a new business. "We have an established relationship and they are willing to give us their industry-specific knowledge; it helped me tremendously," Money says.

But one of Junto's biggest assets is that the program, with its network and financial backing, provides a squad of ambitious nobodies with instant credibility.

"Everybody has a business idea," says Money. "Junto gave me the credibility that I was really going to do this - that I wasn't just talking. I had something tangible."

Says Allred: "Junto opens doors that we would otherwise never get into."

But what if it - failure - happens?

"It's time to refocus and move on to something else," Allred says, touching on what might be the most important trait of a successful entrepreneur. "Not every business succeeds. There are things that are out of our control. Failure is just a data point."

Are you Junto material?

Junto Entrepreneurship Program begins with 10 weekly three-hour training sessions. From an initial group of about 20, five entrepreneurs are selected to launch or buy businesses. The qualities Junto seeks include:

Commitment to work long hours and take failure and disappointment well.

People skills to persuade, influence others and sell.

Initiative to seize business opportunities and lead.

A simple life with few commitments and distractions and strong family support.

For information or to apply visit http://www.juntopartners.com