At a very young age, Ronnie Fieg became infatuated with the sneaker culture of New York City. He began working as stock boy at a local sneaker shop in Brooklyn at the age of 12. For years, he studied and watched the sneaker culture change as he worked stock. When he was 17, he was offered a sales position in the actual store. He quickly excelled in this and eventually earned himself the spot of a manager. From manager, he was promoted to the head buyer for the whole company. It is here where he made many connections with brands such as Asics.

From those relationships he formed while the head buyer for the company, he began to realize the opportunities that were placed in front of him. He left the company and decided to start his own company, Kith. Kith started out as a sneaker boutique in New York City, but has adapted into a menswear store that carries outside brands, along with their in-house apparel and sneakers. He has prided himself on bringing the utmost premium materials and craftsmanship into his products at Kith. Ronnie is now a leading influence in the sneaker community around the world. He continues to bring the best collaborations between Kith and other brands because of those relationships he formed while working in his previous job.

Casey Neistat grew up in a small town in Connecticut. He lived a very modest life, but at age 16, he dropped out of high school and ran away from home. Casey ended up having a kid at the age of 17 and needed to make some huge life decisions. He decided to pick up everything and move to New York City. It was in New York City where Casey found his passion for film making. Casey ended up selling his TV series he created with his brother to AMC, and everything kick started from there.

Casey began to post a vlog of his life on a daily basis and grew a huge following. It’s here that his idea for his company Beme came to fruition. Beme is a social media app that allows users to share their life experiences without having to pay attention to what they are filming on their screen. Beme currently has 40 employees and is still making his vlogs on a daily basis. He is a true inspiration to many.

Matthew Mullenweg was born in Houston, Texas in a small town. He attended The High School for Visual and Performing arts where he studied jazz saxophone. After graduating high school, he attended The University of Houston and studied political science. In 2004, he later dropped out of college to pursue a job he received at CNET Networks. You may ask yourself, why did a political science major drop out for a job opportunity at a tech company? Good question.

While enrolled in The University of Houston, he had an interest in blogging. During a trip to Washington D.C. in 2002, he used a blogging software known as b2/cafelog. Shortly after begging to use the software, it began to get dated. So, together, Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg decided they were going to revive the dated software. After forking the software to bring it up to the modern day standards, WordPress was created.

Resume to 2004 and that’s where CNET Networks hired Matt to work on their blogs and overall media of the company. While he was doing that, he worked on WordPress. In 2005, Matt left CNET to pursue WordPress full time. Over the course of just a few years of leaving CNET and focusing on WordPress full time, he created three separate tech businesses that all tied into WordPress. The most prominent of the three is Akismet, which is a community based program that helps trackback spam and comments.

At age 31 today, Matt Mullenweg is worth a combined 40 million dollars. He still owns and runs WordPress and is also highly involved in giving back to the community of entrepreneurs. Matt’s story goes to show if you are determined enough and have a dream, anything is possible to obtain.