Archive for Droupout

Jared Isaacman – The Billionaire Astronaut

Polaris Dawn Team training for their next mission (Isaacman is the third on the right)

Jared Isaacman is today worth around 1.4 Billion USD his story begins in New Jersey. As a teenager Isaacman dropped out of high school when he landed a job with Merchant Services Inc. as an consultant who provided information on the web which was new at the time. He had previously took advantage of the new trend of the web by selling web services to local businesses which is where he got the connection with MSI. During his brief time working at the company he realized the opportunity in the industry, it took to long for businesses to adopt POS systems (Credit/Debit Card terminals) and where eager to have a third party bridge the gap by making these services easier to use which in turn increases sales for the businesses using POS. Isaacman left the company to start his own business as a teenager, because of his age he needed family connections and a loan to be approved for a credit ID to use his businesses. His business quickly took of as the digital age became inevitable and Isaacman brought one of the first Digital terminals to market which is what we often see today shopping at local restaurants where you simply put your card in to pay. His business expanded and included his former employer MSI and Shift4 a large competitor whose name he took for the company. Today the company is one of the most competitive in the industry rivaling only Square who has a different target customer. In addition to Shift 4 Isaacman is a extreme aviator holding multiple records for his daring trips in fighter jets. Later as an adult he also founded Draken International which is the largest private air force in the World which trains Air Force pilots saving the USAF money and time. As if that was not enough Isaacman has also been to space… He partially funded and was a part of the first fully-private Space mission, teaming up with SpaceX for the Inspiration 4 mission which also raised million for Charity by raffling a seat on the mission. Today Isaacman is training for Polaris Dawn his next Space Mission again with SpaceX. This time he will be team commander a position usually only held by the most experienced NASA astronauts.

The brains behind Clicks Talent

Abraham Lieberman a veteran for the Israeli military used his time when not in service to start working on his dreams. He took advantage of the rising need for social media consultants amongst US companies and used that to start up his business, Clicks Talent. He saw the pain of many influencers that they might not have even realized or noticed. These influencers weren’t using their full talent in the ability to push and promote social media apps. While he was originally from Israel he knew that there was an open market in the US and took a break from his college education to pursue this opportunity. Abraham was very quick to see that new apps needed big name influencers and creators to promote their apps. He continues to diversify his company and pivot as new apps come out reaching those apps with different influencers that related to those apps. Abraham has really taken advantage of the rise in short-form videos such as Tik Tok and other apps that are now adding these videos into their portfolio. He has now expanded his company into a global powerhouse now reaching a variety of countries and apps within those countries. He believes that diversifying oneself in cultures allows them to grow and thrive in the current marketplace. A key aspect that I took from this article is Abraham’s emphasis of collaborating with people that have more experience than you and will be able to open your mind to different ideas. Personally, Abraham inspires me to think outside the normal box of products or services and to look for areas in the marketplace that no one has thought of or looked for. I think that using social media in the current time period is something that I took from this. I believe that social media will continue to open more and more areas of opportunity in the marketplace of the future.

 

Read more here.

Patrick and John Collison – Stripe

How did two brothers who grew up in rural Ireland come to be some of the youngest self-made billionaires and have what could be one of the most important internet companies in the world? Patrick and John Collison were very smart from a young age. They learned to code by age ten, and loved reading. They started a few businesses early on, including one called Auctomatic, which helped sellers on eBay. It ended up selling for $5 million in 2008, when Patrick and John were 19 and 17 respectively. They both attended prestigious universities, Patrick went to MIT and John went to Harvard, but they both ended up dropping out of college and had the idea for Stripe in 2009.

Before this time, there was not really an easy way for money to be transferred over the internet. PayPal was around, but the process still had a large amount of improvement to be made. Patrick and John saw an opportunity for a better payment transaction system on the web. Stripe gives businesses seven lines of code to paste into their website, then they are able to accept payments easily.

Soon after starting Stripe in San Francisco, they ironically received investment money from PayPal founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, as well as Sequoia Capital and other investors. They also received money and guidance early on from Y Combinator – a famous startup accelerator in San Francisco, as well as CapitalG – Alphabet, or Google’s investment company later on. In 2016, Stripe received a $9.2 billion valuation making the brothers both billionaires, and in September 2018 they received a $20 billion valuation. They still have a lot of work to do before reaching that valuation, but it shows the large potential of the company.

Stripe has also connected with some huge clients. Companies like Facebook, Lyft, Shopify, Spotify, and SquareSpace all use Stripe to process their payments. They even have started working with Amazon on some of their transactions. Stripe now has millions of businesses using its platform, and handles billions of dollars in transactions per year. Chances are that half of the transactions a person makes online are through Stripe, whether they know it or not.

Patrick and John are constantly thinking about how to improve the lives of people around the world. In 2016 they started a platform called Atlas that helped international startups with incorporating in United States. They also love to read and be outside. Runs and other activities with their Stripe team members happen often.

Stripe is impacting millions of people and businesses in how money is transferred over the internet, and in many other ways. It will be exciting to watch the company as they grow in the future and impact millions more.

Social Media Tycoon

        Evan Spiegel is someone who has accumulated great wealth at a young age through the popular multimedia messaging app Snapchat. Being a California native, he grew up surrounded by all sorts of innovation and developments. Evan attended Stanford University to study product design, which eventually led him to come up with the concept of Snapchat. This idea received lots of criticism from his peers, but Evan decided to pursue it with two of his peers by creating a prototype. It was first named “Picaboo”, which would later be renamed Snapchat. He then decided to leave Stanford to focus on Snapchat fulltime. From 2012 to 2018, the daily active users went from 1 million to a staggering 400 million. Spiegel reached billionaire status by his mid-twenties and is now worth $1.8 billion. This goes to show how someone’s age does not limit them to achieving a high level of success. Perseverance and vision were very integral to Evan’s pursuit for achieving big things, even when his peers thought the idea was bad.                                                                                 

 

Ritesh Agarwal

Ritesh Agarwal is an unconventional entrepreneur from India. He was not fond of the traditional path his peers were taking so at the age of 17 he dropped out of college in order to pursue his own start up company. He had the idea of opening an affordable hotel chain which provides bed and breakfast services. Ritesh opened Oravel Stays shortly after and at the age of 18 he started his company with 11 rooms in a Gurgoan hotel. Today, his company has 65000 rooms in about 5500 properties across 170 cities in India and it worth over 5 billion dollars. Other accomplishments for Ritesh are a monthly revenue of 3.5 million dollars, a network of 2,200 hotels in 154 cities across India, being named among the top 50 entrepreneurs by the TATA first dot awards in 2013, he was a finalist of the global student Entrepreneurship Awards in India, he has been named one of the 8 hottest teenage startup founders in the world by a Business Insider in the year 2013, and he was the World’s youngest CEO at 17. These accomplishments have allowed his story to become one of the most successful entrepreneurial ventures in all of India.

Source: https://medium.com/@riyanair161991/top-10-young-entrepreneurs-achievers-young-indian-entrepreneurs-of-2018-64c1f83f59f4

Gerard Adams – The Millionaire Mentor

According to Inc.com, Gerard Adams was the second most influential millennial entrepreneur to watch in 2017, only behind Mark Zuckerberg. Adams has started and invested in a number of businesses, many of which have become huge successes. He spent one semester at Caldwell University before dropping out and going off on his own. His father worked at Prudential Financial which grew Adams’ interest in the stock market. He started several companies in the financial industry. One of these was called StockSpot, which he says grew to a revenue of $10 million before the 2008 stock market crash. In recent years, Adams has invested in or started nine companies, all of which have made over a million dollars.
The business Adams is most well known for is Elite Daily, a news platform for millennials. The site reached over 80 million monthly visitors. In 2015, Adams and his two co-founders sold the company to Daily Mail for $50 million.
Adams calls himself The Millionaire Mentor. His goal is to inspire millennials in their passions. He does this through a few avenues. The first is his website (GerardAdams.com). On this he has blogs, videos, and other information to help entrepreneurs. He also has a business called Fownders, which has classes, articles, and other things that encourage social entrepreneurs.
Gerard Adams is very passionate about helping entrepreneurs, especially millennial ones, in pursuing their passions. It is great to see a successful person using their gifts to help other people who are starting out just like he did at one point.

“How I Made and Lost 2.5 Million Dollars

2.5 million dollars is a lot of money for anybody, let alone a 21 year old high school drop out.  That, however, was the income of millennial entrepreneur Andrew Fashion.  Andrew created websites which gave users the tools to personally design their MySpace pages. Upon his creation of these websites, Andrew started taking home checks upwards of $100,000.  Unfortunately, he was incredibly irresponsible with his money.  A luxurious house in LA, and multiple top-of-the-line sports cars.  This was just a start.  Newest advances in technology and trips to Hawaii, London and a number of other places around the world were soon tacked on to Andrew’s exhaustive spending.  The key to Andrew’s success?  Excellent marketing that resulted in his sites topping Google’s search rankings.

Unfortunately for Andrew, all good things came to an abrupt, and unpleasant end.  A massive overhaul of his websites in 2007 made Google think they were brand new sites, causing them to plummet to the seventh and eighth pages of Google searches. Andrew’s seemingly endless well of profit instantly dried up leaving him in massive amounts of debt.

Since then, Andrew has been blessed to dig himself out of his financial hole.  He has worked through his debt, and is now a successful internet marketer.  He has clearly learned from his mistake.  “Instead of blowing money on toys and cars, I am going to invest it back into the company or another company.  I will do the typical saving, like 401 k’s and rainy day funds.  Looking forward, Andrew hopes to move away from the internet business and become a real-estate developer.

AndrewFashion

Hu is She?

huJulia Hu is doing something dozens of others are doing.  But she is doing it right and she is doing it better.  Hu created a wristband called LarkLife that tracks sleep patterns, diet, and exercise.  Millions of people attempt to log their food intake and fitness for the day through phone apps and website, but have trouble keeping up.  This is not the only issue – Hu and her 21 employees at Lark Technology believe that people are not challenged to change their life simply with raw data.  “When you look at everyone in the world, about 3 to 4 percent are motivated by data. These are Olympic athletes, highly goal-oriented people, and tinkerers,” Hu explains. “The rest of the population is not at all motivated by numbers–or is actually negatively motivated by seeing numbers.”

In fact, the major innovation in her idea is in the interpretation and delivery of the data recorded by the wristband.  The various versions synchronize with your smartphone every day and then turn that information into real tips at the end of the week on how to change your life.  Inc.com asks the consumer to imagine the tips are a health or lifestyle magazine written specifically for you.lark-life-smart-wristband

Hu is as unique as her ideas.  At age 28 she is a second-generation Chinese immigrant, serial entrepreneur, violinist and former gymnast.  Like many entrepreneurs, Hu did not finish the degree she set out to graduate with.  She received her master’s and bachelor’s degrees at Stanford University, but dropped out of business school at MIT to found Lark.  A colleague commenting on the savvy business woman said, “She’s disarming, sweet, and kind, and then you realize she’s completely out-negotiated you.”

One of the most entrepreneurial and inspiring aspects of Hu’s idea are the opportunities it has to continue growing.  The business is collaborating with hospitals to assist patients in reworking sleep routines and is looking to create similar relationships with other health-related organizations.  Hu also has the chance to create the world’s largest sleep database with data from its thousands of users.  She responds to this opportunity by wishing “that benefit can be applied to everyone’s health,” which is the most impressive characteristic of this entrepreneur.  For Hu it is not only about the money, but the ability to aid the entire world, not only Lark users, in the quest for a healthier life.