When he was six years old, Cory Nieves decided he didn’t want to have to take the bus anymore. He told his mom that he wanted to buy a car so that he could drive to school, and that he had a business plan so that he could make enough money to accomplish this. Cory started out in the world of entrepreneurship by selling hot cocoa. As he began making a but of money doing this, his mother encouraged him to start saving for college rather than buy a car. He decided this was a good plan and that in order to do it, he should expand his business to sell lemonade and cookies as well. He experimented with different recipes and ingredients until he finally made the perfect, organic, and all natural cookie. 
Over the past 6 years, Cory has grown his business tremendously and been features in many different magazines and news programs as an inspirational young entrepreneur. He has sold his cookies to Aetna, Barney’s, Bloomingdales, Citibank, J. Crew, Macy’s, Mercedes-Benz, Pottery Barn, Ralph Lauren, TOMS, Viacom, Whole Foods, Williams-Sonoma, and others.
Cory’s story is neat because even though selling lemonade and cookies is not innovative in and of itself, the story behind Cory’s business, of a six year old wanting to buy a car, is endearing and innovative, and makes you want to buy cookies from him rather than from someone else. By getting out his story, it distinguished Cory from other little kids who sell cookies and lemonade and made him into a truly successful and inspiring entrepreneur.
As a homeschooler, Natalie and her family had to buy all of their books themselves, and as there was no curated or organized way to buy used book, they usually ended up buying these books new from publishers, which got very expensive. However, Natalie noticed that after he finished with a book, it just stayed on her bookshelf until it either was given away to a family friend or sold at a significantly reduced price at a yard sale. Natalie considered how wasteful this was, both on the buying end and the reselling end because there was no organized platform for homeschoolers to interact with each other in this manner. Out of this pain came her idea of Hoot Book Revival, which is an app and website on which homeschoolers can resell their books and buy used books from other homeschooling families at a reduced cost. This benefits both the buyer and the seller, because people looking to buy books can get them much cheaper than they can new books, and people looking to sell books can sell them for more than they could at a yard sale.
When I asked Natalie about how this business came about and what need it was filling, she said, “I suppose the core of the business idea was identifying an underrepresented group, and how their market needs weren’t being addressed, because the business pitch itself is pretty simple.” Natalie’s website allows the customer to buy and sell books, as well as collaborate with other homeschoolers on which lesson plans and books are best. Hoot Book Revival also has an option where people can post their books and let Hoot do all the work in finding people to sell them to, making the customer experience more enjoyable and less labor intensive.
