Archive for App

Matthew Mullenweg: Internet Powerhouse

Matthew Mullenweg is a beast. He is co-creator of many open course organizations, including WordPress, a program that powers over 31% of the entire internet. However, this idea didn’t come out fully baked. Back in high school, Matt noticed that there were few news websites on the web. Matt would instead read blogs written by various professors and write some blogs of his on using Movable Type. This program became costly, so he ended up switching to b2/cafelog. b2, an open-source blogging tool. Matt enjoyed coding, so he decided to build something that would combine the utility of Movable Type and cafelog, so him and a friend both put together the first iteration of WordPress in January of 2003. In May of 2004, WordPress was fighting to get a bigger audience, and they received much attention after a competitor changed pricings for their service. This drove many people away to look for other options for internet platform providers. WordPress was there, ready to help the thousands of people that were searching for a more affordable service. After CNET saw the great success Matthew was having, they invited him to come work on their site that was using WordPress. Matt, obliged, but eventually left to focus his attention on the program itself. The years go by, and Matt was doing great. He added many new features onto WordPress, and it catapulted in popularity over the next few years, and powers over a quarter of the internet today.

Too Good To Go

In 2015,  Thomas Bjørn Momsen, Stian Olesen, Klaus Bagge Pedersen, Adam Sigbrand and Brian Christensen from Denmark came together and created a brilliant idea and subsequent company. “Toogoodtogo” is a mobile app that “connects customers to restaurants and stores that have surpluses of food”. In other words, if the local bakery makes 10 extra French baguettes than they sell, they can put them on the app and people can buy them remotely at a discounted price. This app was founded as an instrument of “International Day of Awareness of Food and Waste”. I know, isn’t that a creative name? But the founders could no longer stand by watching local restaurants throw away tons of product for the rats to feast on; so they took action. Only in September of this year did this company expand into 17 other countries (including the United States). I have it downloaded but haven’t used it yet, BUT my brother made it very clear how well “Toogoodtogo” has spiced up his rather boring meals; adding an authentic French dessert pastry to the usual chicken nuggets will do wonders.Ht7OXfuYPvtSdFl7PnuX6KisTLgSceF9krOmxof7klTgqNR7UBVc53z63Vm3NuOQ0eo (512×512)

Chris Barton – Founder of Shazam

Have you ever heard a song that you didn’t know the name of? If so, you just pull out your Iphone and ask Siri, “hey Siri, what is this song?” and boom, you know the song within 15 seconds. Apple did not invent this software; it was created by a guy named Chris Barton. Chris Barton studied at the UC Berkeley. He created the software called Shazam. If you are not already familiar with Shazam, it is a software that identifies what you’re hearing on the radio, in a store, on your device, or anywhere else you hear recorded music. It has become such a useful and revolutionizing tool, hence why Apple purchased it to be used as one of Siri’s features.

Barton had the idea of Shazam long before its time. While he was in college, he thought of some kind of software that could identify music through sound recognition. The fact that he came up with and began the process of launching Shazam in college, makes him a young entrepreneur despite the fact that he is now 47. Although Barton had the idea, he did not have the tech mind to construct what needed to be constructed. So, he searched for a co-founder that could assist him in that field. He found Avery Wang, who completed his PhD in music-related Digital Signal Processing within the Electrical Engineering Department at MIT. From there, the rest was history and Chris Barton’s idea from back in college was formed into the phenomenon on Shazam today!

Catherine Cook

The concept that Catherine Cook and her brother came up with is very neat. For a better way to get to know her classmates they developed myYearbook.com. At the age of 15 and 16 the siblings got their older brother, Geoff, to develop the site for them. It was said to have been like “Facebook for high school.” What really drove her innovative thinking was seeing her older brother develop his own business out of his dorm room. By seeing him excel and succeed she knew it was possible for her too. She knew that even the smallest of ideas could make a big difference. The site now has over 32 million members. Since Facebook at the time was becoming bigger and seemed very similar to it, Catherine and Geoff came up with their websites message. myYearbook.com was about making new friends whereas Facebook was about the friends you already had. This helped shape their basis of their website. They started developing different features and apps to define their message. Users now had the ability to find people they would want to get to know based on the apps and features provided. myYearbook later became sold to QuePasa since yearbooks became less popular. Now came the new development of MeetMe in 2011, it was time for it to become global. Now people had the opportunity to meet people all over the world.

Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom: Instagram

Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom created Instagram in October of 2010.  Krieger and Systrom created the app after being inspired by their shared love of technology and photography.  Their app was an immediate success gaining millions of users in a few short years.  One of the main reasons that they decided to create Instagram in the first place instead of using one of the myriads of other image sharing websites such as Facebook and Twitter, is because they felt that these other websites did not allow people to share images meaningfully, so they decided to create their own alternative.  Another reason why Instagram got so popular was because they managed to release their app right when social media was becoming popular and when more people started getting access to faster broadband internet.  As time has gone on the app has continued to add features that not only keep the current users of Instagram happy, but also bring in new users to the app everyday

What I think makes Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom exemplary entrepreneurs is the fact that they found a common passion in an underserved market, so they created their own app to fill the void.

Ben Pasternack

Ben Pasternack is an Australian technology entrepreneur, and he is the CEO of three businesses. The three businesses he runs are called simulate, flogg, and monkey. It all started when he was just 14 and got bored in his science class so he decided to create a fun app to pass the time. He created the app called “impossible rush” and this had over 2 million downloads. The best part of his story was what he put in his locker at the end of eight grade that read “If you’re reading this, you really f—ed up.” He said he wanted to never go to school again and wanted to make money with his apps. His most successful business is called simulate and his signature product is NUGGS which is a plant-based nugget simulation. I thought that his story was very interesting because he was not the type of kid to pay attention in any of his classes in school. I respect how he found what he was good at and just focused on that when starting his own businesses. His journey is inspiring because at the young age of 16 he had to move from Australia to the United States by himself. He said there were times he felt very lonely but fought through it by focusing on his passion of developing new apps. I also thought it was clever how he uses different social media platforms to reach his customers. He takes full advantage of the web so he can optimize his success for each of the businesses he owns.

Ben Pasternak - Wikipedia

SAFETRIP

SAFETRIP is a wonderful app designed to book non-emergency and emergency medical transport for the elderly, veterans, homeless, and anyone else in need. Surprisingly, this revolutionary idea was co-founded by young engineer Langston Whitlock. 

At 12 years-old,  Langston was learning to code and fell in love with it. Eventually, Langston used his newfound knowledge to make an app to contact his absent father. With these skills, Langston was later brought on to the SAFETRIP team by Ja’Nese Jean. 

Ja’Nese Jean, a co-founder of SAFETRIP, birthed the idea when witnessing a homeless veteran not having access to healthcare or transportation. Knowing Langston’s skillset, she invited him to the developing team to collaborate together and make the revolutionary app come to life. 

This app allows its users to book emergency or non-emergency transportation. Vehicles include premium cars, vans, wheelchair accessible vehicles, and ambulances as needed. 

Since its creation, SAFETRIP has raised over 2 million dollars in funding because of Langston’s technology. Although it’s currently based in Georgia, the company hopes to soon expand into other parts of the country and make an even bigger impact. 

Ekaterina Demenkova

Ekaterina Demenkova recently made it on the Twenty Under Twenty list, where she pitched her health tracking app, PODIL. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University, and is the Founder and CEO of PODIL. This type of position comes with great responsibility, but Ekaterina was passionate about her innovative cause and became an established young entrepreneur that helps many people with her creation.

PODIL promotes wellness, and allows its users to meet their health and wellness goals through an AI. The AI assistant gives the user a list of steps specifically curated for them that helps make someone’s health goals attainable. It utilizes a communal platform where people can share their accomplishments with their friends and family, and compete in challenges together.

Ekaterina’s overall goal was to make health information and personal health tips more accessible, and her app does just that. Her mission is to help people develop healthy habits, and grow easily, and PODIL uses technology to her advantage in doing so.

She is a perfect example of an innovative, young entrepreneur, especially considered what she has accomplished at such a young age. She revolutionized a new way to receive accurate, efficient, and reliable health information and advice so that people can make positive and healthy changes in their lives.

Benelab

Benelab is an alternative search engine that donates all of its ad revenue to charity. Jack Kim founded the non-profit when he was 16, in 2011, after realizing how much money a major search engine, like google, is able to generate. Searching for information is one of the largest markets on the internet and Benelab seeks to tap into that by redirecting funds to help solve issues around the world. Each month, the team (initially consisting of Kim and his schoolmates) selects a new charity to support and sends out a newsletter to keep their users updated. Benelab highlighst how if just 0.0001 percent of the aproximate 4.1 billion web searches each day occurred through the site, it could donate $250,000 a month to non-profit causes.

GRADPRENEUR – Raspinder Singh

Raspinder Singh observed that there were a variety of issues that plagued college graduates once they began searching for a job. At the age of 22, Singh developed Gradpreneur, a networking platform offering tools and resources to recently graduated students by assisting them in expanding their strategic professional networks. The site allows users to build relationships for locating jobs, as well as creating new ventures. The concept is highly intriguing and offers a valuable service to aspiring young business professionals. Singh took a tired old problem of navigating the job hunt upon graduation and was able to provide a platform which helped to facilitate the interaction between employers with a talent pool from which to fish.

Although Singh was not the first person to develop a platform of its kind, he certainly appears to have done an excellent job at tailoring his tool to be highly utilitarian for both companies and graduates. Singh was effectively able to capitalize on a common need in an effective manner and so, even though he may not have necessarily been the first to create a site of its kind, he developed a stickiness in the marketplace that many of his competitors failed too. Thus, his innovative idea in a saturated market proved to be an excellent solution.