At the age of 7, Alina Morse walked into the bank with her dad not expecting much of anything – especially not a business opportunity. The bank teller offered her a lollipop. Despite wanting to accept, her parent’s words about candy rotting your teeth rang in her head. So she asked herself the question; why can’t lollipops actually be good for your teeth? Thus her idea for Zollipops was born.

Morse and her dad set out to make a solution to this question. They tried different ingredients and used a bunch of research to eventually come to a product. In 2014, Zollipops first hit the shelves in stores. These treats were lollipops made of vegan, all-natural, and sugar-free ingredients that were safe for teeth. As for the name of the company, it came from Morse’s younger sister’s mispronunciation of one of the teeth-friendly ingredients.

Today Morse has expanded her company (ZolliCandy) to include other teeth-friendly candies like taffy, chocolate caramels, and Zolli Drops.

During Mackenzie Drazan’s freshman year of collage, tragedy struck as her sister took her own life after years of struggling with depression. Instead of letting this break her down, like a horrendous situation like this would do to anyone, she saw a light at the end of this dark tunnel. Drazan had to ask herself, even though her and her family took her to many clinics and doctors, how was it that this was still the unfortunate outcome? She found that the current system for mental health and health care was failing where it should be efficient to prevent situations like this. She dedicated her life to working toward a solution.

Drazan found that there was a disconnect between physical health care and mental health care referrals. Her and her cofounder Gabriela Asturias, who she met in her dorm at Duke University, founded their version of a solution in 2017 that they named MiResource. MiResource is a service that helps find the right mental healthcare for patients and their individual needs. Their goal was to bring effective mental health care in an easy to access space. Drazan’s service takes the confusion and complication out of finding the right care in order to not only simplify the process but to also be the most efficient solution for someone who is struggling.

MiResource recently raised $3 million from investors including big companies in the health care field like Blue Cross and Blue Shield. They also recently received a $1.2 million NIH grant. Drazan is also starting to work with insurance companies in order to connect patients with in-network care in the future.

At the age of 15, Ben Pasternak – an Australian native – found himself to be extremely bored in his high school class. Needing to do something to cure the boredom, Pasternak thought out and designed an app he named Impossible Rush. This app was a brain teaser game that would go on to dominate app charts worldwide, beating out big names like Tinder, Vine, and Twitter. Ultimately, this became Pasternak’s first success and one that would take him down the path of entrepreneurship.

In April 2015, Pasternak had moved to New York City for an internship and had also moved on to his next project: Flogg. This was an app created for young people to buy and sell. This early success caught the attention of investors like Binary Capital,  Greylock Partners, John Maloney and Paul Bricault. although Flogg was highly successful and reached number one in the app store, Pasternak shut the app down in 2016 to pivot the company to work on his next idea.

His next project was an app called Monkey, which was an app that enabled teenagers to video chat with others of like mindsets. After raising about $2 million in funding, this app became a reality. This was yet another huge success for Pasternak, again reaching number one in the app store and getting over 20 million users. In 2018, a social networking company called Holla purchased and acquired Monkey for a sum of money, allowing Pasternak to move on to yet another brilliant idea.

In early 2018, Ben Pasternak – now at the age of 19 – cofounded SIMULATE. SIMULATE is a nutrition tech company who’s mission is the upgrade the world to a positive food system. They think of it as a nutrition company that operates with a software framework. The first product was NUGGS which is a chicken nugget substitute made out of plant-based protein. The company initially had $11 million in funding from investors helping it to stand out and out compete in the area of development.

Overall, Ben Pasternak’s story is one of early success that turned into many profitable and great venture from a young entrepreneur.

At the young age of 9, dressing sharp was very important to Moziah Bridges, although, he found that it was tough to find suitable bowties that complimented his style. As a solution to his problem, and to the people experiencing this same issue, he decided to make his own bowtie company called Mo’s bows in 2011. Bridges began by first learning to sew from the leftovers of his grandmother’s sewing projects. Soon his business took off and was beginning to be sold in retail stores and online shops. Eventually his business got successful to the point where he was able to hire tailors so he could focus on the creative and business sides.

Eventually, Bridges took his business to Shark Tank in hopes of getting funding and a manufacturer for his project. Although he didn’t walk away from the show with a deal, his idol, Daymond John, promised to mentor him in entrepreneurship strategies. Now at 20 years old, Bridges has sold more than $700,000 in handmade men’s ties and even accessories. Places like Cole Haan, Bloomingdale’s, and Neiman Marcus now carry his products.

Moziah Bridges also started a charity  that sends Memphis kids to summer camp called the Go Mo Summer Camp Scholarship Fund. Today, this organization has helped to send more than 50 kids to summer camps. Overall, Moziah Bridges’ story is an inspirational tale of a young entrepreneur bootstrapping with resources available to him and something he is passionate about to create a successful business.

At the age of fifteen, Alexander Kulitski was a part of his IT club in high school competing in competitions when he suddenly had a realization – he could earn money for what he was doing. Kulitski discovered that he could be a freelance worker. After creating his own profile, it took another 2 years before he got his first project. With this however, he was able to gain more customers to the point where he would get 3-4 project requests per day and was unable to continue to manage all of them on his own. He brought a close group of friends in to help complete the work and after some trial and error, Smart IT was born.

Kulitski’s company Smart IT builds custom software and web applications for small and medium businesses. They supply the development and support teams for prominent enterprises internationally. With this, Kulitski co-founded the first online ticket sales service in his home country. He also took a key role in planning and building the software for the service. This turned into a very profitable business and allowed him to continue to innovate in other areas as well, like becoming the CEO of another of his businesses called MEDvidi.

Alexander Kulitski continues his work to this day and is devoted to developing a community of programers who can think outside the box to solve their clients’ problems.

In 2007, Melanie Perkins, who was 19 and in college at the time, was teaching design software to her peers and found there were several major problems with the current systems. She found that the software of the time was very complicated to learn, as well as expensive to purchase and use, thus Perkins set out to create an affordable and easy to use software – Canva.

Like most start-ups, Canva did not gain much traction at first. It took Perkins over 100 tries and many unsuccessful trips to Silicon Valley to finally find her first investor which got her start-up off the ground. This took her about three years to accomplish. She believes the change in support came from her shift in pitching strategy, which was to focus more on leading with the relatable problems Canva aims to solve.  After acquiring her first investment however, Canva took off rather quickly as a business – which officially launched in 2013. Canva gives users the opportunity to create beautifully designed resumes, posters, presentations, invites, and more for little to no costs with easy to access tools. Canva has become a widely used and desired platform to this day and has made enough money to not only continue thriving, but to allow Perkins to give back through donations to a charity devoted to ending poverty.

Through her dedication and motivation, Melanie Perkins was able to turn her idea into a massive success story. She did not falter when her idea was cast aside but rather continued to pursue it in the hopes of providing the community of designers with a powerful tool. Perkins’ story speaks to the need for persistence and resilience in the realm of entrepreneurship, as well as the importance of effective communication and pitching strategies.