Robert Nay created his first game at age 14. The game was called Bubble Ball and was downloaded over 2 million times within a couple weeks of launching. The game passed Angry Birds for the number 1 spot on the downloaded free games on the Apple app store. The unique thing was that Nay had no coding experience and learned how to create the game at the library. Nay created the idea by himself with some influence from other games and friends. This game is available on the app store and has been downloaded over 7 million times to date.

The 8th grader started a mobile game development company called Nay Games and they are creating some new bubble ball projects as well as other gaming projects.

Nay was very smart in terms of marketing his free app. He started with creating a free app and creating the addiction to the game. From then on he created updates and a pro version that users could purchase.

Nay has some business startup costs including a variety of licenses from the Apple Developer, The Android Market and the license for Corona SDK. However, this didn’t stop him from creating his extremely popular app.

It is very impressive that a 14 year old can create something so incredible. Although its a simple game, teaching yourself code is not an easy task. App development is a great market in today’s society. It may not be easy, but hey you never know, you could end up creating a number 1 app just like 14 year old, Robert Nay.

Caine Monroy was a young 9 year old boy with an incredible imagination. His father owned a used auto parts store in East Los Angeles that would be the site for Caine’s arcade. Caine spent months perfecting his arcade down to even creating shirts for his staff members. Caine didn’t get any customers for a while, but he never gave up. One day a man named Nirvan came buy and paid $2 for tickets in Caine’s arcade. Nirvan was also a filmmaker and ended up coming back to film the arcade with a mob of people to surprise Caine. This video went viral and Caine’s arcade went worldwide. Nirvan set up a scholarship for Caine as part of the film and ended up raising over $240,000. Tens-of-thousands of people from all over the world visited Caine’s arcade after the film went viral. Caine began to speak in front of business schools all over the world. Caine has spoken on TEDxTeen by himself, TEDx with Nirvan and has even been invited to the white house! Although this may not be the usual entrepreneur story, it is very inspiring. Caine used his hard work and motivation to create something incredible out of cardboard boxes. Even though he had no customers until Nirvan came in, he never gave up. He has now inspired kids all around the world to stop watching TV and to use their imaginations and create something.

College students all love to eat food, especially pizza late at night. A lot of students also love to eat dessert type snacks late at night as well. Seth Berkowitz saw this niche and came up with the idea of Insomnia cookies. Insomnia cookies is a company that’ll deliver cookies to you late at night, just in case ordering pizza is getting old. Seth saw the opportunity when he realized that he and many of his buddies loved eating cookies, and other dessert snacks late at night before they went to bed. However, they would always have to go somewhere to get snacks and it was a pain because they were in Philly and he didn’t want to go out in the cold to buy cookies. Seth did a great job starting up the idea by talking to people and asking if they would pay for cookies that were delivered to them. They said yes and so he baked the first batch himself and gave away free samples. People loved it and he began trying out different recipes to see what worked best. After years of testing the market he was able to start his first shop in New York. Seth was successful because he spent time working on building a good reputation which led to word of mouth on campus. Seth realized that creating another restaurant would make him just another fish in the sea so he worked on creating something new and not similar to the same old ideas. differentiation and looking for a niche was the key to his success.

Young Cameron Johnson first started his business ventures at the age of 9 when he began to create invitations for his parents party. People noticed his skill and by the age of 11 he had saved up over $1,000 from making greeting cards. Doesn’t seem like much, but for a 9 year old its very impressive. Since then Johnson had done things like buy TY beanie babies at wholesale and sell them at retail making over $50,000 in cash. With this much cash at a 12 year old, what would you do? Well for Cameron Johnson he decided to start EZ Mail. This is a service that forwards emails to a particular account without the recipients personal information. After this he created Surfingprizes.com which provided scrolling advertisements across the top of users’ web browsers. Cameron’s time line as a kid is just him finding creative and ingenious ways to make money. He attended college at the Virginia Polytech Institute for less than one semester until he came up with another business idea called Certificateswap.com where people can exchange gift cards they wont use though Ebay. If a 9 year old can make money then anyone can. As long as we all use our talents and jump on any ideas that come to our heads. Johnson has been successful because he didn’t wait for someone else to use his idea. Every time he came up with a creative idea he went out an made it happen.

Prior to being the CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky was just an average human living in San Francisco and struggling to pay his rent. Although his company is now worth $3 million he still lives in the same apartment. For those who don’t know what Airbnb is, its quite simple. Airbnb is just a simple service that lets people rent out their homes to others who are coming in town. Brian loves it because he believes its a great way to meet others. The idea all started when Brian and and his roommate Joe Gebbia saw the problem of not being able to sell their rent. They heard there was a design conference in the area and all hotels were booked so they decided to create a website (airbedandbreakfast.com) and rent there living room people to people for $80 a night and they would cook them breakfast. Soon after they both realized that this had to be something everybody could do and they began to create their business. This shows a great example of two regular guys living day to day and seeing a problem and thinking of ways to fix it. Not only did they help themselves, they also helped others with the idea. Those who struggle to pay rent now have a great way of earning a little extra cash. Although it took them a while to fund their company, they did it in creative ways and did not give up. Many might believe this is a very risky business in letting strangers stay in your house. However, because of past vandalism, they now offer $1 million in insurance and even have customer service agents available 24/7 to help if need be. The growth of the company is substantial, who knows where it could go next.

Chris Ruder (CEO of Spikeball) took a lawn game from the 1980s and revolutionized it into a very competitive sport. I take particular interest in Spikeball because my cousin is one of the few employees that helps run the business. Chris started small by creating a few sets with a website to get the show on the road. With the help of social media the game has become a nationwide phenomenon and is even recognized by the hashtag #JoinTheMovement which hopes to build the sport aspect over a lawn game. The business plan was quite simple, but Ruder’s main concern was that people thought of Spikeball as just another lawn game like Kan-Jam or ladder golf. Although it took a long time for Spikeball to grow into what it is today, it is now reaching $6 million in annual revenue. Tournaments take place all over the United States and today there is even a national championship for the sport. Spikeball even had the chance to pitch their idea to Shark Tank which landed them a $500,000 deal with Daymond John.

Spikeball has an impressive story. Cris Ruder’s dream of creating a new sport has clearly shown how well social media can create a fan base and lead to success. I’ll never forget when my cousin gave my family a Spikeball set and taught us how to play 5 years ago. We began to play in Wildwood, New Jersey and everyone on the beach asked us what we were playing. Now when we go back to the beach, everyone has a set and the skill level of players is phenomenal. Spikeball is clearly not just another Kan-jam. The competitiveness and athleticism it takes to win has made it a great sport to play on college campuses. At Grove City College it is now an official intramural sport!