Mark Zuckerberg is a man whose life and achievements will probably always be remembered. He grew up as a quirky but brilliant kid full of incredible ideas and programming talent. He went to Harvard where he and some of his friends created the website that changed the way that people now interact. His website was of course Facebook. Facebook started as a simple campus wide social media where people on campus could log and share thoughts and pictures with friends. After being very well received at Harvard Zuckerberg realized that his social media platform might actually make a lasting difference in the world. The website spread to several other schools and by that time investors were incredibly interested. Zuckerberg dropped out of school to continue building his website which now has 1.79 billion active users. People have been able to interact in a way that they had never before done. Zuckerberg is worth somewhere around $50 billion dollars. He continues to work on Facebook while being an incredibly generous philanthropist.

Andrew Mason just needed an opportunity. He was a young guy with lots of great ideas but he needed money in order to turn some of those ideas into reality. His boss saw his initiative and the fact that he had some great ideas and give him $1 million dollars for one of his ideas that he thought could make it big. Andrew Mason bought a web platform called The Point and began to make it his own. His idea which he called Groupon, was a way to bring the best deals that restaurants and stores were offering into one place where people could see them and then use the coupons to save money. Groupon’s revenue comes mainly from the businesses that they refer. This is a terrific idea that simplified what is for many people, a very complicated process. Within a short amount of time he was offered $6 billion dollars from Google for his company, but he never was interested in a buyout. A little while after, Andrew Mason had a fallout with the company after some questionable monetary decisions and strange behavior and eventually parted ways with Groupon, but his idea still lives on.

Christopher Gray was a man who had found a problem. In his search for colleges he realized that he was going to have to find a way to win scholarships if he ever wanted the opportunity to go to college. He came from a low income household and the only way we could ever pay for school would be to win his way in. He searched through many different scholarship opportunities and ended up entering many of them. He made a job of winning these scholarships and by the end he had won $1.3 million dollars’ worth of scholarship money. During his time searching for these scholarships however, he realized that finding scholarships that apply best to the person looking for them are very hard to find. He come up with a solution. His app, called Scholly, gave students an easy way to find the money that they needed for college. He brought his idea to the show Shark Tank where he got $40,000 dollars and help on promoting his app. Since then his app has been very successful and helped thousands of people obtain scholarships that allowed them the opportunity to get an education.

Josh Bruno was a young entrepreneur who had run into a problem. His grandfather was 93 and becoming ill and his family simply did not have the time to care for his every need. They were able to help him in many ways, but they needed professional help. After trying several caretakers who simply did not work out because they did not understand the context of the situation, Josh came up with a solution. He created a company called Hometeam that would help assist families who are trying to care for their loved ones but simply do not have the time to do it all themselves. While this is not even close to the first company that has done something like this, it is the only one that can claim to personally train their caretakers and pays them at a wage that is at least 30-50% more an hour more than the average elderly caretaker receives. The caregivers that they hire are of the highest quality due in part to the fact that they only hire around 1% of the applicants for the job. Josh understood that the in-home care industry was lacking a company that was able to get the best people and train them how to interact with the many different situations that they would face in a positive way. Very few in-home care companies have full-time employees so this is what set Hometeam apart. While they are a company that has seen quite a bit of growth in only two years, it has been slow to see profits because its cost are so high. He hopes that by continuing to provide the highest quality care that more and more people will realize how valuable his company’s service is and they will continue to expand revenue so that they will be more profitable. Josh says that in the end what really drives him to continue is changing the industry that failed his grandfather.

Jordan Fliegel loved basketball. He was also pretty great at it. He came from a background that was immersed in basketball and thus he always grew up playing and loving the sport. He spent his college years playing basketball at Bowdoin College where he started for 3 years and lead the team to the NESCAC Championship game. He then went on to play professionally at several different international teams. When he realized that his basketball playing days were over he realized he couldn’t bring himself to leave sports for good. He came up with an idea called Coachup that could help connect athletes to personal coaches in a way that has never been so streamlined. He created and promoted a website where athletes can go to search by location and sport what trainers and coaches are in their area. They then book those coaches and they set up the coaching sessions. The idea is great because it connects athletes who struggled to find personal coaches. Coachup makes revenue by charging the coaches a small fee per month of using the service. This is a great service in a very confusing area that really did find itself in a solid market.

Marcela Sapone and Jessica Beck were sick of it. Every time they came home from work or an activity there was a to-do list waiting for them. As two very young and successful, but also busy professionals, they realized there might be a way to solve the problem of the pesky to-do list. They started a company that sends a butler to your home every week to do your chores that you either do not have enough time, or simply don’t want to do. While other people have tried to create a service like this, no one has been able to do it nearly as effectively. The fact that the butlers can do anything from cleaning and dry-cleaning to going and getting groceries, is what makes this such an innovative idea. The service is available in five different cities in the US. I love the simple idea of this company because it fixes so many problems that everyone deals with in one company. I think the biggest thing to be learned from these young entrepreneurs is that not only can you innovate to fix small problems, but that there are even solutions for the bigger problems everyone experiences. To see their website go here. https://www.helloalfred.com/