Born in Dromineer Ireland, August 6th 1990, John Collison attended Harvard University in 2009. Yet, even before he would attend college, his brother Patrick and him created a multi-million dollar software firm that would make it easier to manager transactions on ebay — which they sold before going to college. However, John had a change in heart, a year later he dropped out of college to join his brother to make a business in the Silicon Valley. Despite their wealth, and soon to be wealth, John and Patrick were too cheap to buy a car to ride to work, instead they biked for a while.

The brothers found a problem with online payments — the transactions were not smooth and was not reliable as one would like it to be. So John and Patrick decided to found Stripe, which is an online payment company. Stripe went public in 2011 and is currently used by corporations like Amazon, Google, Instacart, and many more. The business is valued at $95 billion dollars and John Collison is currently valued at $9.5 billion.

John Collison exemplifies an entrepreneur for several reasons. For starters, Google considers him an entrepreneur. On a more serious note though, John innovatory sought and solved problems. The first problem John and Patrick saw was with a lack of organization for ebay sellers. The system ebay had set up was far from perfect, and the brothers solved the problem through a business that gained them millions. Secondly, both brothers ended up turning down Ivy league education for a pursuit of entrepreneurship. Rather than going to MIT or Harvard, both brothers decided to take a relative risk and move to the Silicon Valley to start a business from the ground up. Now, because of John and Patrick’s hard work and pursuits, we have smooth online transactions on websites like Amazon.

Born in Flordia, 1984, Dustin Moskovitz would later become roommates with Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard. Just like Zuckerberg, Moskovitz would drop out of college to help start Facebook. Despite being a part of Facebook, he decided to leave in 2008 (after 3 years). Moskovitz decided to start his own company, cofounding Asana with Justin Rosenstein, who also used to work at Facebook as well and was the one who created the like button, in 2008. Officially founded in 2011, Asana faced a lot of initial criticism, though received investments from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg. Roughly eight years after founding Asana, 2018, Moskovitz decided to go public, at which point it was valued at around one and a half billion dollars. Starting last year Asana entered the New York Stock Exchange. Since last September, when the stock value was valued at roughly $22, it has more then quadrupled.

So what makes Dustin Moskovitz an entrepreneur? We must keep in mind what an entrepreneur is; a person who creates impact and value through innovation. For starters, he got involved with founding two major companies: Facebook and Asana. Looking at Facebook, it can be easily seen that there was enormous impact and value added on a global scale through internet innovation. Asana, on the other hand, helps groups start and finish coding projects.

One thing I find very respectable was leaving Facebook to start his own startup company. Facebook was a relatively secure business, considering he was working with some of the smartest guy, especially considering that he was with them for 3 years. Despite this, he turn it down to chase after his own goals. In fact, a large percentage of Moskovitz well comes from his 2% stake in Facebook.

Another respectable thing is how involved Moskovitz is in charity. He started the Good Ventures foundations, which is a philanthropic foundation to help eradicate malaria.

Kevin Systrom was born 1983 in Holliston, Massachusetts. He attended Standford University where he majored in Management Science & Engineering.

Systrom was later offered by Mark Zuckerberg a position in his Facebook start-up, which he turned down for school – Systrom would later come to regret this decision. He would then work at Google for 3 years in the marketing division, followed by work at a start-up called NextStop — which was later acquired by Facebook.

At this point there wasn’t too much entrepreneurship showing in his actions. This all changed when Systrom wanted to create his own business and product – Burbn. Burbn was a photo-sharing and social networking app that recieved support from Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures. There two men each invested $250,000. Systrom later pivoted from Burbn into Instagram after he came up with a way for Instagram to standout from other social media platforms at the time – filters. Instagram blew up right from the start resulting in over a billion current monthly users. It was aquired by Facebook

Almost a decade later, Systrom stepped down as CEO from Instagram after conflict with Mark Zuckerberg and in hopes of re-igniting his entrepreneur side again.

Systrom reflects many attributes of what it means to be an entrepreneur. His passion for photography led him to want to create a product that can appeal, on a global scale, to people who want to share photos. To add to that, pivoted from his original business idea after realizing that a major change could prove to be the key to success. I personally think many people should strive to be like Systrom in his pursuit of creating a way to make “dreams”/goals possible.  As the current status of Instagram shows, a pursuit of one’s own passion could result in a priceless product.

Even though Systrom stepped down from CEO, at the age of 37, he’s far from done with his career.

Born in 1992, Abhi Ramesh showed entrepreneurial potential early on in his career. He started off as an expert consultant for Operation HOPE helping teach High School students in Philadelphia about finance. As his career moved on, he created, or co-created, Altair Prep,  TrendBent, and StoreTok – all these start-ups were technology and social media related.  

Ramesh’s idea for Misfits Markets, which sells and delivers food that grocery stores are unwilling to buy from farmers, started when he was apple picking at an orchard. He noticed that apples that fell on the ground were gathered separately by the farmers from those picked directly off a tree. Ramesh soon realized that any produce that was misshaped, discolored, or had any marks short of perfection were essentially thrown away. After realizing that this process has been going on for over have a century, Ramesh decided to do something about it – creating Misfits Markets. 

At Misfits Markets Ramesh would buy those “misfit” produces items for an extremely discounted price, then he would resell it and deliver it. This company started up in June of 2018. Surprisingly, when covid came around the company was able to adjust pretty well as online ordering increased. Right now, the business has a billion-dollar evaluation. 

Ramesh clearly displayed his entrepreneurial mindset when he saw a flaw in the way the market was running. Searching for inefficient methods in the economy and being able to solve it is huge when it comes to finding a service or product to sell. In this case, the problem was so huge, Ramesh ended up having a billion dollar idea.

Ramesh’s passion is also clearly evident in his entrepreneurial goals – which is evident in the companies he was involved with in the past. He knew that starting Misfits Markets was going to be the biggest and most expensive thing he would ever shoot for. He took on over six-figures of debt just to kick-start his business.

Born Sweden on February 23rd 1983, Daniel Ek grew up in a relatively poor household. Influenced by his Grandparents, who were involved in various classical music, Daniel found his passion in music.

Daniel’s entrepreneurship journey started in high school (IT Gymnasiet i Sundbyberg) where he freelanced creating websites. His business was so successful, he started hiring is classmates and ended up profiting tens of thousands of dollars each month! Despite Daniel’s clear drive in the technological field, his true passions lay with music. After he graduated high school he went to KTH Royal Institute of Technolog, dropping out after eight weeks since it didn’t focus on Computer Science, and picked up a job at an international advisement company.

Even though Daniel was successful by many modern standards, something was still missing from his life. He ended up founding Advertigo, worked at Tradera, and served as CEO of uTorrent until 2006. During some time in a solitude in a cabin in the woods, Daniel thought up the idea of an app that could play any music for the world. In 2006 he started and created Spotify.

So how exactly has Daniel changed to the music industry? Why does it even matter? Just four years after the creation of Spotify, it influenced about 7% of the music industry. Ten years later, in 2020, Spotify jumped to 83%! As one can easily assume, Spotify was the creation of a multi-billion dollar idea. This is truly an inspiration to all entrepreneurs; the way Daniel mixed his skills and passion into a service/product that is now worth billions.

He didn’t just dream about small change. No no. Daniel wanted to create a product for the world. He saw the need for a new platform of music. He sacrificed the security of his other successful careers and jobs for a dream.