Author Archive for Dan Christiansen

The Mozart of Millennial Entrepreneurship

E4B14619-1CA1-4E4D-B151-4C2EBC807B63

Jourdan Urbach is a prodigy Julliard violinist turned social entrepreneur and philanthropist. At the age of 7 he was the youngest person to ever play Carnegie Hall. Then in 1998 his started his first non-profit, Children Helping Children in order to leverage his early music success into funds for children stricken with neurological illnesses. This non-profit would raise over $5 million while he was still in high school. Later he would start several more non/for profit ventures like Collegephilanthropy.org and DevHound. For his philanthropic social enterprises Jourdan would receive our nations highest honor for public service the National Jefferson Award. Jourdan’s most recent venture Ocho is a social video platform that is “re-imagining how we see and share our world. Ocho is a media device that is even beginning to rival social media giants like Vine and Instagram.

Evident in Jourdan Urbach’s success is a burning passion to help those around him and do so with excellence. Elegance in design, brilliance on the violin and empathy with his consumers are all words that accurately describe everything that he does. When Jourdan starts a company he is not done with it until it is completely self-sufficient, saying, “You really haven’t built an organization until it can live without you.” Just by visiting Jourdan’s website you can see a visual example of his tenacity and elegance when comes to design and his businesses. He truly is a Millennial to look up to.

The Billowing Sails of Innovation.

Expendable energy is a global issue that continues to provoke young entrepreneurs to search for new and creative ways to create renewable energy sources. Many have undertaken to transform the energy market through solar energy, hydroelectric power, biomass and wind turbines, but few have tried to innovate within these renewable sources. Shawn Frayne, the developer and founder of Humdinger Wind Energy, has revolutionized the wind power industry through his wind belt technology. Instead of the traditional, inefficient and unattractive wind turbines, Frayne’s wind belt is microscopic in comparison (ranging in sizes from a couple centimeters- to a couple meters), and 30 times more efficient, edging even into the average price of coal.

"Windbelt technology"

Frayne came up with the idea for the windbelt while on a trip to Haiti, in which he was trying to convert agricultural waste into burnable charcoal. While developing this technology he realized that there was a need for producing low cost energy to provide electricity to impoverished areas. A solar energy plant was out of the question, so the next logical option was wind power. Frayne’s wind belt uses a membrane stretched across a bowed surface that oscillates back and forth when a wind current travels past it. This oscillation creates a current that is transformed into electro-magnetic energy, which is capable of generating a considerable amount of power.

What impresses me the most about Frayne’s innovative style, is not as much the idea he had for the design, but the way he came up with his idea. Frayne had a mind set on a problem, and had a heart that was passionate about finding a solution. He began by focusing on a general need, cheap sustainable energy, and eventually narrowed this need into a specific solution: wind energy.

Get sick, to get rich.

Pete Cashmore has a fire burning in his belly for social media and blogging the news. Literally.

At the age of 13 Cashmore developed appendicitis and had an appendectomy, that left him sick and unable to attend school. Because of his absence from school, and disconnectedness from his education and friends, he began pouring himself into computers and blogs. He completely invested himself in computers during his time at home and began to subscribe to every blog he could find. So, in a very short while he learned an extensive amount about the blogging industry. A fire for dispersing information and blogging began to burn in Pete’s stomach, which led him at the age of 19 to create “Mashable.”

Created in 2005, Mashable, is an inclusive entertainment and news blog, which is now considered the leading source of information for the “connected generation.”  Time magazine has noted it as one of the top 25 best blogs in 2005, and has listed Cashmore as one of its top 100 most influential people in 2012.  Mashable has come to be known as the, ” ‘one stop shop,’ for social media,” and to this day reaches over 24,000,000 people per a month.

What inspires me the most about Pete Cashmore is his passion and his zealous personality. He had a fire in his belly. He saw a need for innovation in a market that was saturated, (literally the media/ news market) and developed something that people liked and wanted. Mashable  has synthesized the entertainment industry with news media, into a one stop shop for our generation.  Now, because Cashmore was passionate and innovative, he has begun to change the way we communicate and gather information.

 

 

http://www.inc.com/chris-beier-and-daniel-wolfman/how-pete-cashmore-founded-mashable.html