Pepsi was founded in 1898 by Caleb Bradham, who was a pharmacist and businessman from North Carolina.  He was looking for a sweet drink to bring customers into his store during the hot months of the south.  He took several tries at it, and eventually came up with the formula for Pepsi.  He originally started marketing his drink from his pharmacy.  The drink gained popularity quickly and he soon won a patent for the recipe.  Pepsico was officially founded in 1902.

The company and patent had quite a run since then.  They have gone bankrupt, been repurchased several times, etc.  However, their solid foundation has given them a loyal customer base for over a century now.  The company continues to innovate, adding new flavors, developing new marketing schemes, creating new products, etc.  It will be interesting to see if they can keep the spirit of Caleb Bradham’s initial invention alive.

Home page (pepsico.com)

Kevin Plank was a former captain of the University of Maryland Football team.  During his time there, he detested how his cotton shirts got wet and had terrible resistance to moisture.  After he graduated, he wanted to see if he could take the type of technology from his compression shorts and see if the moisture wicking concept could be applied to a wider range of clothing.  He started funding with some of his own credit and then ended up taking out multiple credit cards, slowly racking up debt.  He went broke only a year after founding the company.

However, his luck would soon change.  Georgia tech soon signed a small deal with Under Armour, and then multiple NFL companies soon followed suit.  Under Armour took off, and soon Plank’s company had $2 billion in sales.  Plank has discussed many times about how being a successful entrepreneur doesn’t happen by accident.  He describes it as “You have to put your hands around the throat of your business, and you need to run it.  There’s no other way.”  Plank has used his success and mentors many groups of up and coming entrepreneurs.

Under Armour® Official Store | FREE Shipping Available

Roy and Ryan Seiders grew up as avid outdoorsmen in Texas.  They were always hunting, fishing, and doing whatever else they could get their hands on in the Texas woods.  However, as they got older, they began to be frustrated with the quality of coolers available on the market.  Most of them were cheap or poorly crafted, and didn’t fit the two brothers’ needs.  In 2006, the brothers started YETI, a cooler brand designed to have the durability and quality to put up with the demands of outdoor life.  Since then, they have expanded their product portfolio greatly and partnered with many outdoor companies in order to reach their target audience.

YETI is effective for a number of reasons.  First of all, YETI was one of the first durable coolers truly designed for game/fish/outdoor activities.  This has caused it to be very popular among the outdoorsmen crowd.  Secondly, the Seiders have expanded upon their products greatly.  They now offer mugs, thermoses, containers, etc. in order to meet a variety of customer needs.  This along with their quality has made them marketable to a wide variety of customers.  Lastly, their cutting-edge insulating technology has given their products the ability to keep things warm or cold longer than other coolers before them.  Other brands are now starting to catch on, but they were definitely the first.  Even with a great foundation, Roy and Ryan Seiders have even more opportunities to expand, and has begun to look into clothing, apparel, refrigeration, etc. to continue to grow their brand.

Coolers: Premium Durability & Insulation | YETI

Vivek Ramaswamy is an American entrepreneur who founded Roivant, a biotech company specializing in drug and health technology.  Ramaswamy developed the company to license drug candidates and further develop the drugs.  However, Ramaswamy saw opportunity and expanded the company to develop drugs from earlier stages as well as create platforms to help them grow.  This helped them get their start, and from their Ramaswamy has created multiple subsidiaries under Roivant that range from laboratory testing to healthcare data platforms and more.

Ramaswamy has been a successful entrepreneur by forming partnerships to meet needs for sompanies and customers.  In 2020, Roivant partnered with certain laboratories to give them resources to test and develop cures for COVID.  They have partnered with numerous hospital systems to help organize and make their data systems more efficient, providing better patient care.  In these cases and more, Ramaswamy has recognized needs and problems, and partnered to help offer his resources to solve the problem while being able to meet his interests in return.  He is now a candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

Roivant

Sergey Brin and Larry Page are famous for founding Google, the worldwide search engine that has become a multi billion-dollar corporation.  Google began as Larry Page’s idea for a dissertation theme that explored the mathematical algorithms that led links to lead to certain web pages.  Overtime the project slowly progressed and began to become really efficient and take hold.  Sergey Brin had joined Page on the project, and slowly the two of them realized that they would be able to create a search engine of sorts, something that existed only in crude forms in the 90s.  Suddenly the two took this beyond the dissertation and realized there was potential to monetize their idea.  Soon Google began to allow adds and sell keywords at cheap prices, but as much traffic as the website got they were bringing in solid revenue.  Google began to sell shares and had their IPO in 2004.

Google has gotten to the top of the search engine world for a number of reasons.  Firstly, Google’s algorithm allows it to operate much faster than most other search engines.  This efficiency has helped draw a large crowd looking to find information quickly.  Furthermore, Google has a larger index of sites than most other search engines, giving users much more information readily available at their fingertips.  Lastly, Google’s algorithm is able to detect much more relevant information, giving users more recent and up to date links than other search engines.  All these and other reasons have given Google a solid base of users that has left other search engines in the dust and not able to keep up.

Google

Bang Energy has been one of the most successful, revolutionary energy drink companies in the last five years.  With this generation of caffeine addicted teenagers, they have capitalized on the demand for energy drinks and made it in almost every mainstream convenience store and gas station.  In 2020, Bang was reported as the third highest selling energy drink in America, only behind the giant corporations Monster and RedBull.  At the center of this operation is none other than Jack Owoc, the CEO, CSO, and founder of Bang energy.

Owoc has done several things that have made Bang Energy unique.  First of all, Bang is packed with caffeine that delivers a boost of energy to their customers to help them power through workouts, their workday, or whatever may be in their way.  Furthermore, Bang has deliver dozens of new unique flavors such as birthday cake, candy apple crisp, rainbow unicorn, frose rose, and more.  Not only that, but all these flavors are zero calories, compared to high calorie energy drinks such as Monster.  Finally, Jack Owoc has taken to social media to really drive his brand.  He makes posts almost everyday giving workout tips, fashion ideas, promotional videos, etc.  Oftentimes these videos include fitness influencers, models, and celebrities that help deliver an attractive brand image.  By doing this, Owoc has helped create a theme that attracts young people to Bang as well as getting it in the hands of many social media influencers.  Monster energy has reportedly bought out/is in the process of buying out Bang Energy for $362 million, which will leave Jack Owoc as a very rich man for his creation. Check out their former website at Bang Energy