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Walter Roth, a 23-year-old entrepreneur who quit college a semester short of an industrial engineering degree so that he could create a dot-com company, announced that his Honolulu start-up has received $6 million in venture capital.

That comes on top of the $800,000 that Roth's company, hotU Inc., received in March from seven local investors including Ron Higgins, founder of Digital Island Inc.

Using its own email system, Web-based bulletin boards and "instant messenger" software, hotU's site -- http://www.hotU.com -- will provide college students, universities and businesses with a central location to share scheduling and other information about classes in colleges throughout the nation. The company plans to make money by charging companies for getting access to the data students offer online about their own class schedules, Roth said.

The schools cannot legally release that information, Roth said. He noted hotU would be careful not to release private information. "Basically, we're trying to build relationships between the students and the universities."

Working out of the state's Manoa Innovation Center, hotU is developing the Web site and plans to launch in time for the fall semester, Roth said yesterday. The company plans to market hotU.com to 150 universities in the next year.

Roth, chief executive of hotU and son of University of Hawaii law professor Randy Roth, left his own studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in December.

"College was getting in the way of my education," Roth said yesterday. He also felt he was going to miss the dot-com explosion.

Roth grew up in Hawaii and returned with his plan. He said he was advised to seek out Higgins, who founded Digital Island in Honolulu in 1995. The company, which moved its headquarters to San Francisco in 1998, sells a high-speed network for businesses. Higgins resigned as chairman in September, and later announced plans to invest in a new Hawaii start-up.

Roth said Higgins liked his idea because hotU.com would prove useful to students, and could market itself through word-of-mouth advertising. Higgins, who originally served as a director of hotU, will be chairman, Roth said.

Higgins said today that HotU was incorporated in California in February because that state's law are better suited for high-tech company's than Hawaii's laws are. A month later, Higgins joined real estate developer Duncan MacNaughton and five other Hawaii-based investors to fund hotU with $800,000. Some of those investors also contributed to the recent $6 million pool, along with Bill Richardson's venture capital fund HMS Hawaii Management Partners, and two other California venture funds, Invencor Inc. and Media Technology Venture Funds, Roth said.

The Hawaii state government also has a stake. As a limited partner in Invencor's International Venture Fund I, the state has a "significant" interest in the fund's $750,000 investment in hotU, the fund's Managing Director Kirk WestBrook said today.

Invencor learned of hotU through Higgins and lead investor Barry Weinman.

The state is investing through the Hawaii Strategic Development Corp., a venture fund that cashed in earlier this year on a million-dollar stake in Digital Island.

Another boon for hotU's venture capital is Laurie Foster, whom the company hired as president six weeks ago, Roth said.

Foster, born and raised in Hawaii, quit her management consulting career on the East Coast four years ago and returned to Hawaii, looking for $3 million in venture capital to start a restaurant. She helped to bring Brew Moon Restaurant & Micro Brewery -- an East Coast establishment -- to Ward Centre in 1998.

Foster is still a board member of Brew Moon in Hawaii, but was looking for other work earlier this year, and knew Roth's father.

HotU is preparing for another round of venture-capital financing, which could lead to an initial public offering of stock, Roth said. Until then, plans include doubling or tripling the staff of 30, hiring business development and marketing employees, Roth said.

Higgins said he expects an IPO in about two years.

Roth planned to fly to California today to start recruiting and said he hopes to attract Hawaii ex-patriots.