Since the rise of smartphones in America, there have been multiple mobile and web businesses created with the intention of promoting healthy living. Companies like fitbit, Noom, and MyFitnessPal have found great success. However, Hemi Weingarten has made a significant contribution to this market. Weingarten is the founder and CEO of Fooducate. Fooducate is a mobile app that helps one loose weight, track progress, and count calories that can get people motivated. Sounds familiar, right? However, Fooducate is the only app that looks beyond the calorie to help its users. This app has an immense library of the ingredients of almost every product you might find in the grocery store and any restaurant menu (from McDonald’s fries to your local burger joint’s ranch dip.) The app allows you to scan a product bar code, gives a quick overview of the pros and cons of the ingredients used to create that product, and track the quality of those calories. It really is a great app. I’ve used it over the past year and highly recommend it. Fooducate was created when Weingarten realized that a lot of the food he was feeding his kids contained a lot of unhealthy ingredients. Around that time, he was looking at what his next career steps were and fooducate wasn’t in his mind at all. One night, while he was having trouble sleeping, the idea just came to him. Weingarten says that was when the ball truly started rolling for his idea that became Fooducate!

John Pegg began his entrepreneurial venture by reviewing cheap and accessible colognes for men on his YouTube channel where he went by the name Kerosene. By saying accessible colognes, I mean that these are the colognes that one could find on the shelves of Walmart, CVS, or Target stores. These colognes are made cheaply and many synthetic chemicals are used to evoke natural scents. Eventually, Pegg began to review more and more expensive colognes that might be found on the shelves and displays of upscale department stores or perfume and fragrance boutiques (such as Guerlain or L’Artisan Parfumeur.)  Throughout his reviewing experience, john would find notes and smells that he enjoyed, yet he felt that they weren’t mixed or created to smell the way he wanted them to.

So, instead of searching for the perfect cologne that would please Pegg’s noes, he decided to create his own line of fragrances under his YouTube name, Kerosene. His first attempt to create a fragrance took over 6 months in his perfumery lab before he felt that it was ready to be sold to the public.

Among perfume collectors that would be made aware of his fragrance release praised his creation. Since 2011, when he began selling, Pegg has released over 16 different unisex fragrances.

Boomf was started back in 2013 by James Middleton. Essentially, boomf creates a personal twist on the marshmallow industry. People are able to upload pictures to boomf’s website and those pictures will be printed on squared marshmallows and sent out in gift boxes to whoever the customer wants to send them to!

The ink used is made out of food coloring and is totally safe to eat. Boomf is a company based in the UK but offers free shipping to all over the world.

They consider themselves an alternative to sending chocolates or flowers. Instead, you can send someone memories that you have shared together in the delicious form of fluffy candy!

Julian Smith is another entrepreneur that started out on youtube.com. He began by making skits and music videos with his friends back in 2008 while uploading them to YouTube in his high school years. To his surprise, many of his videos were caught in the YouTube spotlight and were featured on YouTube’s front page. Julian continued to create videos for YouTube on a regular basis for the next four years. Mostly, his videos featured parodies of the ongoing dramas between his friends. Often, Julian would star as himself or as his deranged counterpart, Jeffry Dallas proving that he was more than a capable actor. During this period, Smith continued to gain popularity and subscribers. He also created his own website that featured high-quality streaming of his videos, access to his blog, and his ventures in photography.

Additionally, Julian created his own line of T-Shirts referencing jokes, sayings, and artwork from his videos that was sold on his website as well as in Hot Topic clothing stores all over the country. Julian also created his own music group called B-Story. B-Story’s single, “Back Then”, was released on his YouTube channel and on iTunes. Unfortunately, it never gained popularity. Although B-Story’s failure was disappointing, Julian jumped onto yet another venture, this time creating a hired for commission video company named, PaperTown. PaperTown was somewhat successful as the videos produced were both witty, well directed, and original. Julian’s work was eventually recognized by large companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Hot Pockets, and Purina. Julian went on to direct and star in commercials for all three companies that were successful and aired on live television.

During 2015, Julian hosted a weekly talk show on his YouTube channel. Here, Julian would interview various internet celebrities and content creators.

To this day, Julian is creating and directing ads behind the scenes. He also will occasionally still release a YouTube video on his old YouTube channel. Julian has said that the only reason he still uses his YouTube channel is to create content for his fans who helped start his entrepreneurial career in filmography.