Nick D’Aloisio is a 19 year old internet entrepreneur from London England. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a business executive so there were no programmers in the family. D’Alosio was inspired by Steve Jobs and Apple to get into technology and began to teach himself how to program and code. In his early programming career, he released apps such as the finger treadmill, an app that would turn your screen into a treadmill and allowed you to work out your fingers. Another one of his early apps was an app that was a picture of wood and when the user touched the screen, it would make a knocking sound. He is best known for his app Summly. Summly is an application that will condense news articles and other articles so that they only cover the key facts and important stuff. The user is able to decide which keywords to search for in articles as well as decide where the articles come from. One can keep up with their favorite sports team as well as reading about the stock market all in one app.Only after a month of publishing Summly, the app had over half a million users in 28 different countries. Summly has been taken off of the app store after it was acquired by yahoo. The app was transformed and is used in various web apps owned by Yahoo. D’Alosio started teaching himself how to program and write applications when he was 12 years old. At the age of 15 he developed Trimit, the precursor to Summly. After receiving several investments, from celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, and a rather large one from a Hong Kong Billionaire, he successfully developed Summly. D’Alosio was acquired by Yahoo for $30 Million, and this year he won the Apple Design Award. As well as writing multi-million dollar applications, and working as a computer 
programmer, D’Alosio has managed to complete high school and is currently studying at Oxford University.
Author Archive for Turner Delmaso
IdeaPaint is a dry erase paint that allows the user to turn any flat surface into a dry erase board. The idea was conceived when a group of freshmen at Babson College in Boston had a brainstorming session. They decided to cover the walls of the room in paper so they could more easily write out their ideas so everyone could see it. As they kept tearing down paper when it got full, they suggested that a white board paint would be more efficient. John Goscha and his classmates set out to find a white board paint, and when none were in production, they decided to try and develop their idea. They were granted seed money from Babson and went to the lab to try and produce the paint. After a year, they decided the idea was impossible and John’s two classmates quit the business and did their own thing. John stuck with the idea and went to a new lab where he invited two of his former classmates Morgan Newman, and Jeff Avallon to join the team. The product was developed during the second round of their research and became a big hit at a Chicago trade show. IdeaPaint raised around $5 million in capital and was soon on the market for sale. The paint is now available in various home improvement stores. White board paint is a great idea however, it is pretty expensive if one were to buy it for personal use ($225 50 SQ FT, or the Idea Pro @ $199.50 SQ FT.). I think John had a lot of determination for not giving up on his idea even though his team quit and it did not seem possible through the first round of lab work. There is a time to cut your losses and there are times when you should persevere. John made a good decision and I’m curios to see if he can keep making good decisions to expand and maintain his company.
Ehrsam is a 25 year old Duke graduate who worked as an asset manager and investor for Goldman Sachs before he founded his company. His company is named Coinbase, it is essentially a virtual wallet for Bitcoin. It functions the same way as Pay Pal but uses a different currency. Bitcoin for those of you who do not know, is a new form of virtual currency. It is used globally and about $1.5 Billion worth of Bitcoins are in circulation. The major problem with Bitcoin is that it is very volatile, when the new currency was introduced, it was valued at $1200, now it is down to just over $330. Ehrsam is working to help provide more security to Coinbase users by allowing the user to instantly sell the Bitcoins when they are received to avoid deflation and the varying prices. Coinbase, makes it easier for companies to make large payments more easily as well as make transactions with foreign companies and dealing with exchange rates. Coinbase is available in 19 different countries as of now and is looking to expand. Ehrsam is attempting to make Bitcoin more mainstream. He has used the same model as Pay Pal but has put his own spin on it, Coinbase
allows the user to save their Bitcoins using the vault portion of the app. The vault is set up in a way that the currency can be stored safely, as well as allowing you and your business partner, or whoever you share the account with to cosign withdrawals digitally to avoid users to make unauthorized withdrawals. There are about 37,000 business that trust and accept Bitcoin, but the problem is that there are not enough users of this new currency. I’m interested to see where this business takes Ehrsam. Coinbase has almost 2 million users so far and is the “World’s most popular Bitcoin service.” Pay Pal is very successful and Elon Musk has moved on to bigger and better things, I’m wondering if Ehrsam will do the same, and his company will keep expanding, or if Coinbase will fail because of Bitcoin’s unpopularity and constantly changing exchange value.
Jason Ross is an entrepreneur and a graduate from Ohio State University. He started JackThreads in 2007 after he called it quits on his sports marketing company. Why JackThreads? Ross named the company after his grandfather and threads is another way to say
clothes. The name signifies that the site is for guys and that it is young and stylish. JackThreads is a “flash-sale members-only site” that offers discounted clothes and accessories. All one needs to sign up and become a member is an email address that will serve as your login username. You can order various articles of clothing and accessories from watches to t-shirts to suits. $10 gift cards can be earned when someone you have referred makes a purchase as well. He explained how he was not passionate about his sports marketing company and was unprepared because he did not write a business plan or research the market very well. He learned from his mistake and before starting JackThreads, he researched the market and then realized there was an opportunity. He explained how his inspiration came from private shopping clubs in Europe and he knew that there were no flash sale sites that were exclusively for men. Ross was passionate about style and was into street wear so his target market are males aged 18-35, he went into this business solo and built it up for two and a half years before hiring a second person. He worked night jobs such as bar tending so he could work on JackThreads during the day, he also maxed out several credit cards to pay for business expenses. He used his networks to help construct his first website. He was assisted by one of his former professors at Ohio State who assigned the coding as a project. Ross, as well as utilizing his networks, he utilizes mobile apps. The JackThreads app has been on the iTunes top 10 and has over 2 million downloads. Ross says the app plays a huge role in his business, with 40% of all sales being from the app. Ross started the company with only 6 brands, now he has over 450 and has over $20 million in revenue. A lot of lessons can be learned from Jason Ross and his transition from one business to another as well as his story of building his company.
Skully
, in my opinion, is the future of motorcycle safety. The company was started by two brothers Marcus and Mitchell Weller. The idea came to Marcus after he had gotten in a motorcycle accident while he was trying to read a sign while riding. He had a dream that a gps system was on the glass of his helmet. He was inspired by his dream to solve the problem of limited visibility and the lack of safety while riding motorcycles.
These two young entrepreneurs have utilized crowdfunding in order to raise the appropriate capital to fund their new business venture. Their initial goal was to raise $250,000 but they well surpassed that goal raising over two million dollars. The brothers were smart by looking to an online crowdfunding site because it allowed them to raise a lot of money in a relatively short amount of time.
Now… to the good stuff. The helmet has numerous amounts of new technologies as well as old technologies that the pair has implicated into the helmet’s design. Skully features a rear view camera that will display in the bottom corner of the visor glass. This allows the rider to see what is behind them without having to turn or look at both mirrors. The display is a similar technology to Google Glass, and it also has several other features such as Bluetooth connection and a gps system. The helmet has voice recognition so that the user can play music as well as show the route on the display inside the helmet. The helmet is relatively expensive, it is available for preorder for around $1300. This state of the art motorcycle helmet, that I believe will revolutionize the market for motorcycle safety. The helmets are not on the market yet and are expected to be shipped next year. I am excited to see how well these sell and if the company will grow or even release new products in the future.
Most teenagers and young adults are familiar with Snapchat and use it almost every day. Many however, do not know the story behind the widely popular app. Evan Spiegel, a Stanford drop out, started the company with two other guys while they were in college. The idea came to Spiegel when his friend came into his room to complain about a photo he sent that he wished would disappear. This led to the initial idea of pictures that would vanish after a certain period of time upon receiving them. Spiegel and his partner Bobby Murphy, found a programmer who could create a prototype. The app was not very successful in the beginning. The original name was Picaboo, and only hosted around 130 users. Siegel however, did not come out with a clear intention for the app, the team toyed with the idea of marketing the app as an adult picture messaging with the statement “Picaboo lets you and your boyfriend send photos for peeks and not keeps!” Thank God they refrained from publicizing that idea. There was no real intended user for the app, but after looking at patterns in usage, Spiegal and his team discovered that students were using it during class to send notes and communicate because social media such as Facebook was blocked. Snapchat has revolutionized social media. It allows users to practice their photography skills by taking selfies, as well as posting photos to your story and sending temporary photos to your friends. Snapchat has gone toe to toe with Facebook’s app Poke. Poke was an app developed by Facebook that has the same concept of Snapchat. The average age of Facebook’s user went from 18 to 40. Snapchat’s users, on average, are younger than that of Facebook’s, which factors into the success of Snapchat over Facebook. I personally use Snapchat because it is easier than most other social networks and can be more personal. I enjoy sending pictures and short videos to my friends and I can even communicate with my cousins in England instantly and easily. Spiegel had the opportunity to sell his company and cash out and retire at 24. After beating out Facebook’s app, Poke, Zuckerberg offered to buy the company for $3 billion. Spiegel turned down the offer and still runs the company today. Snapchat is still a young company and I am excited to see what will happen to Spiegel and what the future of the company holds.