Archive for College – Page 2

Tony Xu: The Mind Behind DoorDash

How it all began

Back in 2012, the owners of a small macaroon store were challenged with a problem that many small business owners face daily.  They had many delivery orders to fulfill, but had no delivery drivers to meet the demand.  To ensure that this problem was real, they surveyed 200 other restaurants in the area and came to the conclusion that most restaurant owners feel that deliveries are frustrating. They needed a way to find delivery drivers on demand when an order came about. This is what drove Tony Xu to create DoorDash, one of the most popular delivery apps on the market today.

What makes DoorDash stand out?

Before the creation of DoorDash, restaurants were obligated to hire their own delivery drivers as employees of the company.  This was a challenge for many companies, because often times there weren’t enough available employees to meet the delivery demand. DoorDash wanted to solve this issue, and create a way for delivery drivers to be available at all times of the day.  This app allows delivery drivers to be on demand, and deliver for any restaurant rather than only working for one.  Tony Xu used entrepreneurial traits such as looking at other successful companies, and learning how to implement their strategy into his own.  He looked at the success of FedEx, and wanted to model his business in a similar on way.

DoorDash Innovation

Tony Xu began experimenting with this delivery process in a company called Palo Alto Delivery.  This company was the same as DoorDash today, but on a much smaller scale.  It focused on a very small market around the Stanford University area.  After months of success on a small scale, the owners knew it was time to allow restaurants all over the country to start using the app.  The delivery app slowly implemented its availability to different parts of the country, offering the service initially to urban areas with a higher delivery demand.  With the continued success, most citizens in the United States today have access to DoorDash’s services, including those in rural areas.

My takeaway from DoorDash

The story of DoorDash has taught me that many problems in the world are shared within a majority of people, and can be solved through entrepreneurship.  The problem in a small macaroon shop with delivery demand was a very common issue among other restaurants.  All it took was one person to act on this issue and create a solution that benefited many businesses within the country.  This story also inspired and taught me that entrepreneurship can open up doors in other innovative areas that weren’t originally intended.  For example, the creation of DoorDash was originally intended to solve an issue for food delivery restaurants.  As a result, many other restaurants that hadn’t used delivery prior such as Mcdonald’s and other fast food now use DoorDash to deliver food and create a larger market.  I am excited to see other innovations that DoorDash will implement into their service, and see how the delivery market shifts through time.

Cleveland Cornhole Co.

Cleveland Cornhole Company is a small business specializing in custom cornhole boards and rustic style furniture. Started by Chad Gerzeny a few years ago, as a way to make a little cash on the side, morphed into a legitimate business opportunity. These cornhole boards are high quality, and are highly customizable, they take him days to finish because of the intricacy that goes into each individual board. Currently the boards are made by Chad Gerzeny at his own house, but he plans to transition into a retail store within the next few years.

Growing up playing the game of cornhole was the true inspiration for Cleveland Cornhole Co. Initially Chad started with a single set of boards that he made for himself out of his garage. After enjoying the work so much on the first boards it began to feel almost therapeutic to him. As others saw the quality and craftsmanship of the boards, Chad began to receive individual orders from friends and family friends. As he graduated college and time went on he utilized social media to reach a broader market. And now he is at the point to where he cannot keep up with the orders because of his day job.

Cleveland Cornhole Co. also makes rustic household furniture, from coffee tables to farmhouse tables. Chad Gerzeny has made most of the furniture in his current home, and it will be interesting to see how moving into a retail store impacts his business.

Cameron Johnson: Entrepreneurial Genius

Cameron Johnson has consistently showed great entrepreneurial potential from a very early age. He first started exemplifying his entrepreneurial instincts when he was five years old as he began selling vegetables to his neighbors. When Cameron was nine in 1994, he launched his first business from his house: Cheers and Tears. This company is dedicated to creating thoughtful and meaningful greeting cards. At just twelve years old, young Cameron was making more than $50,000.00 a year!

Cameron then invested in the purchase of 30 Ty Beanie Babies, a line of stuffed toys first founded in 1986. He then sold the Beanie Babies online for ten times the purchase amount on eBay. Cameron saw this investment opportunity and turned it into an official business idea by purchasing dolls at wholesale from Ty and reselling them on eBay as well has his greeting card website.

With the money Cameron had earned thus far, he has since used it as seed money to kick start his next entrepreneurial venture called My EZ Mail, a confidential email forwarding service. Within just a few months, Johnson was earning $3,000.00 in advertising revenue.

Cameron’s next project was called Surfingprizes.com, an advertisement service that put scrolling advertising on top of web browsers. Two features made this service unique. The first is that Surfingprizes users received twenty cents per hour to have the advertisement displayed on the screen. The second feature is that referral marketing is used to increase word of mouth conversions. This was accomplished through offering Surfingprizes users 10.00% of the revenue generated by each customer that was referred to the service. Fifteen-year-old Cameron was making as much as $400,000.00 a month, making him worth more than $1,000,000.00 before he graduated high school. In college, Cameron started CertificateSwap, an online software system, that he recently sold for a six-figure amount. To date, Cameron is twenty-eight years old and is worth a couple million dollars.

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Leigh-Kathryn Bonner with “Bee Downtown”

Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, a student at North Carolina State University and fourth generation beekeeper, needed somewhere to keep her beehive while at college. Unfortunately, dorms have pretty strict policies about what you can and can’t bring to college — and beehives weren’t exactly encouraged.

With the permission of the company she was interning for, she was able to keep her beehives on their roof. Shortly after, other companies heard about this project and wanted to be able to make an impact with bees in their companies and communities.

Bee Downtown soon became a business born out of Leigh-Kathryn’s pure love for bees. They now have over 250 hives at 40+ corporate locations such as Chick-fil-a, Burt’s Bees, Delta, and IBM are among a few of the companies that have participated. IMG_7506.JPG

The honeybee hives are installed and taken care of by Bee Downtown. They offer additional programming for their company partners such as hive tours, team building, and leadership development. The companies involved have access to exclusive events and contacts through Bee Downtown.

Not only is Bee Downtown helping the bee population grow, it is helping companies to grow through employee engagement and interaction. Bee Downtown is a great example of a company with a social mission that will impact many.

Bonner hopes that Bee Downtown will continue to “positively impact the environment, educate the public, and provide a turn key sustainability program for businesses.”

 

Chris Bridges- AKA Ludacris

American Rapper Chris Bridges, rapper name Ludiacris, although most know for his music, is also an entrepreneur involved in many different businesses. Over ten years ago he started his first restaurant business in Atlanta. To further his business ventures, he also started buying real estate in Atlanta. Many people who only know Ludicrous as a rapper were shocked when they found out that he was going into real estate and the restaurant business. But Ludacris in fact does have a college degree from Georgia state university, which has significantly helped him in his entrepreneurial endeavors.

He is now going back to Georgia state to mentor students and work with professors in the Creative Media Industries Institute. His focus will be teaching students about the entrepreneurial business regarding music and film industries. The program is intended to prepare students for careers that go beyond what normal college degrees prepare someone for.  Atlanta is a perfect place for this because of its large music, film and video game industries located there. Ludacris has always been an inspiring artist to me and it is awesome to know that he has an entrepreneurial side and that he he wants to help future entrepreneurs be successful like he is.

GXStudios

The college version of the board game Risk. The game GoCrossCampus also known as GXC is an online game that was developed by a group of current and former Yale students. How it works is a group of students from various schools battle for territory on a map of a college campus, anything from a grassy area or a dining hall or dormitory building. They are trying to create a team based social gaming. As a start-up they raised $1 million in venture capital.

There ideas came from a desire to fuel team and school spirit against other colleges and universities. As well as against affinity groups, ultimately taking sports and college rivalries beyond the playing field or classroom test scores and onto every students laptop.

From the reviews to the left you can see that the appeal to this has grown beyond the appeal of college campuses. Professional businesses has found this as an interesting way to create some fun in the work place and some friendly competition. They currently have three functioning games that are available on their website and allow collaboration across laptop users.

Facebook Founder

Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook is one of the worlds youngest billionaires. It all started when he was 12 years old. He created a program for his fathers dental practice, he also created online games for himself and his friends. As Zuckerberg’s interest in computers continued to increase, his parents hired a private computer tutor. Zuckerberg often outperformed the computer tutor. Zuckerberg decided to take his programming to the next level and developed the early version of Pandora. As young Zuckerberg was developing this, he had many job offers from Microsoft and AOL, but denied all of them. Zuckerberg started working on the social media website, Facebook, in his college dorm room at Harvard. Two years onto college, Zuckerberg dropped out to focus on completing Facebook.

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Mark Zuckerberg is a very successful young entrepreneur and has very many entrepreneurial traits. One trait that is clearly visible in Zuckerberg’s upcoming is his ability and desire to take risks. One instance that shows this is that Zuckerberg dropped out of college to pursue what he was trying to accomplish. Risk Taking is easily one of the biggest traits that create a successful entrepreneur. Zuckerberg is also determined, he was very determined to persevere with his company and wouldn’t let anything stop him. This is also shown when Zuckerberg dropped out of college, not even himself furthering his education got in the way of his dream. Zuckerberg wanted to do things the way he wanted it and wasn’t afraid to tell other people no, he denied many contracts and didn’t want any help besides the men he was already working with. Zuckerberg is very inspiring and shows what is taken to follow dreams from a young age and still shows what it takes to run a successful company.

The True Grove City College Entrepreneur

With the Entrepreneurship program winning the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) Model Emerging Program Award, Entrepreneurship is a hot topic on campus. Professor English, Executive Director of  the Center for Entrepreneurship + Innovation (E+I) at Grove City College said, “The award has already generated greater awareness and interest in our Entrepreneurship program. I was mobbed after the gala with inquiries and requests from other schools and programs to see our center and collaborate with us. It’s an exciting time for Entrepreneurship at Grove City College.” It is truly an exciting time for Grove City College.

Grove City College students, and students from all over the nation now look to Grove City for its entrepreneurial expertise. With an excellent entrepreneurship program, many people see great ideas and creations in future generations. However, many people fail to recognize the greatest entrepreneur in Grove City’s history: Dr. Issac C. Ketler. Like most entrepreneurship students at Grove City, Ketler (who had no entrepreneurial training himself) was filled with excitement to create and maintain his own business. Contrary to GCC students, Ketler desired to start his own college, originally called Pine Grove Normal Academy, but most of us know it as Grove City College.

Fresh out of National Normal School, a college specifically for aspiring teachers, Ketler instituted Pine Grove Normal Academy (Grove City College) at 23 years old in 1876. The first year’s class was filled to the brim with 26 students, but when people heard about Pine Grove’s unique mission, attendance steadily began to rise. By the 1900’s, the attendance of Pine Grove skyrocketed to over 650 students. How did these numbers increase so quickly, one may ask? Well, Ketler did what any excellent entrepreneur would do: He came up with a unique selling proposition. His vision was to create a Christian, educational society that transcends all denominations and belief systems.

Without any type of degree or class on how to start a college, Isaac Ketler showed confidence and brilliance in instituting a now famous conservative college where students today can pursue their passions. Whether one is an education major or an electrical engineer major, Grove City College is a non-government controlled environment where students learn about Christianity in tandem to their classes of choice. Grove City College is truly a place “Where faith and freedom matter.”

“Get Your Textbooks Here!”: A new way to approach those burdensome costs

Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis Perlego

Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis Perlego

Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis are two rising entrepreneurial stars in the world of college textbooks. Often, students are looking to buy used textbooks at reasonable prices, and, just as often, students cannot find used books at reasonable prices. Many have attempted to solve this problem, few have succeeded. Van Maderen and Davis, however, have managed to develop a profitable company off of this problem.

Their company is called Perlego. Van Malderen and Davis both already had entrepreneurial experience, prior to their team-up. Perlego can be likened to Netflix and Spotify, but rather than movies and music, Perlego is an online platform for buying, storing, and reading educational e-books. In order to bring in revenue, Van Malderen and Davis charge a monthly subscription fee, similar to Netflix and Spotify. Their company has already grown to twelve members, and their site has already amassed works from over 1,000 publishers.

Van Malderen and Davis have shown incredible insight into how this generation is so tech-dependent. With that in mind, their idea heavily relevant to this generation. So often, people have been transitioning businesses to online platforms. As college students know, textbooks are a burdensome expense without many cheap, online options. Perlego addresses that gap in the textbook market by offering a solution that makes obtaining multiple textbooks for a low-cost, easy.

I am inspired by this innovation because it is very applicable to my own life-experience. As a college student, books are burdensome, and this solution is very practical. There is a misconception that entrepreneurs have to have a break-through, unheard-of idea. This is not necessarily break-through nor unheard-of. Van Malderen and Davis took what they were experiencing and found a practical, not too far-fetched solution. Their intuition is inspiring and has prompted me to look into my surroundings for practical solutions.

Link to article: https://startups.co.uk/young-entrepreneurs-gauthier-van-malderen-matthew-davis/

 

Brother-Sister Pair Create Multi-Million Dollar Online Yearbook

Who knew that a pair of brother-sister millennial entrepreneurs could create a multi-million dollar business by the ripe ages of 14 and 25? Geoff and Catherine Cook of New Hope, Pennsylvania, built a website called MyYearbook from the ground up – and they did this while Catherine was still in high school. In 2002, when their family decided to make the move to New Hope, Catherine was extremely interested in making new friends at her new high school. One day, she was flipping through the pages of her yearbook when she realized that this was not the most efficient way to make new friends. She thought if only there was an online yearbook where she could reach out to people who did not already know her, but who were interested in making new friends as well. She brought the idea up to her already successful brother who had recently graduated from Harvard and had sold a few of his own companies, and he jumped right on board. He invested a whopping $250,000 and stepped in as CEO. These siblings launched what would become one of the nation’s most-trafficked websites from the comfort of their parents’ home. Within the first week of its launch, 400 users had already signed up and were avidly using the site. After reaching out to investors and focusing on branding their company as “MySpace for high school”, Catherine and Geoff were able to hire a team of engineers to expand their company even further. In 2011, MyYearBook merged with Quespasa – a $100 million deal – that allowed them to reach an even larger Brazilian and Mexican audience, with the new name of: MeetMe. Through this deal, they were able to take their website worldwide and affect millions of people around the globe.

Catherine and Geoff Cook are exemplary millennial entrepreneurs because they started with a simple idea, and through hard work and dedication, they were able to create a world-wide business out of their parents’ home. They were motivated and dedicated, a combination that would drive them to succeed and achieve even more than they could have imagined. Catherine had a vision and at the age of 14 was able to pursue her dreams by pushing every limit and overcoming every stereotype that tried to hinder her. She did not allow her age to stop her, nor did she allow the opinions of others at her new school to impede her goals. She simply worked countless hours, contacted the right people, and most importantly never gave up.

I believe Catherine and Geoff’s story is inspiring and can teach many lessons. Their passion and persistence led them to astounding success and drove them to continually innovate their idea. Catherine talked to other students every day while Geoff networked online to truly see what others though of their site. They constantly critiqued, tweaked, and pivoted their idea based on their target audience’s desires so that MyYearbook became one of the most popular social networking sites in the world.
This has taught me the importance of continuous improvement. I believe that products and ideas can always be improved. As society changes and technology, stereotypes, and expectations change along with it, companies need to constantly develop their products. Even a successful product can always be improved because improvement leads to more success. This is a concept that I intend to bring into the products and businesses that I create both now and in the future.