Rodney Mullen is kind of a strange guy. Anyone who was around him during his professional career could tell you that. Fortunately for him, this often worked in his favor, as he dedicated his entire life to skateboarding, a sport where teamwork is not involved. The funny thing is, that other than skateboarding, one of the first things that is associated with him is innovation.  One only needs to look at his list of invented tricks to understand why. Rodney has invented tricks on every side of the skateboard that is possible, such as a dark slide, which is upside down, a primo slide, in which the board is sideways, and the casper slide, where he stands the skateboard on end. Not only has he invented this wide range of complex tricks, but he also was the first to discover skateboarding basics, such as the ollie and the kickflip. When asked about the kickflip, Rodney said that one time he tried to ollie his skateboard, and failed. While he failed, he saw the board flip around, and said he felt that it was moving in slow motion. Next thing he knew, he had invented the kickflip on accident, a trick where you ollie and kick with your front foot in order to spin the board.

Today Rodney Mullen travels around to speaking events, and even appeared in a TED talk called, “Pop an Ollie and Innovate.” He has his own line of skateboards, called Almost, which consistently pushes the boundaries for skateboarding technology. It’s crazy to think that one of the most basic tricks in skateboarding happened by accident.

Death Wish Coffee is a brand of coffee that prides itself on shock value. It is the world’s strongest coffee, producing about 728 milligrams of caffeine for 12 ounces of coffee. To put this into perspective, this is about 7 times stronger than average coffee. Created by entrepreneur Mike Brown, Death Wish Coffee is made of a secret blend of beans that are roasted with a special technique. Mike Brown was able to create this new product while working at a coffee house.

Not only does Death Wish Coffee have a great product, but they have hit an all time high in advertising as well. In 2015, Death Wish Coffee won the “Small Business, Big Game” competition, which meant they were able to place a 30 second long advertisement during the Super Bowl. I think Death Wish Coffee noticed a gap in the competition, which is why they are successful. With all other companies chasing after taste, Death Wish Coffee tackled caffeine content. No doubt this is their UVP and what sets them apart from the rest.

Over Fall break, my mother asked me if I wanted to go Wegmans. “Sure” I said, thinking that this would be like any other trip to the grocery store, but boy was I wrong. While we were there, I noticed a guy my age that was handing out samples of coffee. I went over and talked to him, and he introduced himself as Jake Decicco, an entrepreneur who was selling “the world’s first super coffee.” It turns out that Jake’s youngest brother created this coffee blend of coffee, maple syrup, coconut oil, and whey isolate in his dorm room at college. He then asked his brothers to join him in creating this company, which they agreed to. Jake then told me that just last week he had been on shark tank, and that the episode was yet to air.

This was absolutely amazing to me. Here was Jake, who started a coffee business with his two brothers, that started in his dorm room. Recently I had begun a coffee project in my one class, and also had my brothers ask me if I wanted to start a business together as well, and here was proof that it was possible right in front of me. In their own product, they used a very important rule of marketing, which is that if you can’t be the first, find a way to be the first to do something. Since coffee has been around forever, Sunniva decided to be the first super coffee. This differentiates their product from other coffee products. It’s amazing that they came to this product and business by messing around with protein and coffee in their dorm room.

Hannah Herbst is a fourteen year old girl who just developed a new way to harvest energy. Her design is called BEACON, which is a small device that gets energy from the tides of the ocean. The device works like this; the BEACON is placed in the ocean, and as it sits there, water flows down a tube into a turbine, which turns to create energy. Her invention won her 25,000 dollars.

Perhaps even more incredible than Hannah’s device is how she got her idea. She was reading a letter from her 9 year old pen pal in Africa who said that she does not have light bulbs or access to fresh water. This letter was what convinced Hannah to work on an idea to solve an energy problem. Here we see the classic entrepreneurial formula, where Hannah saw a pain, and created a device to eliminate that pain. Since she did this successfully, Hannah helped third world countries and earned money in the process.

When I was younger, I loved Sci-Fi books and would read them all the time. Some of my favorite books were the Halo series, which tell a tale about humanity struggling to survive an alien invasion. I noticed that in all the books in the series, they mentioned the idea of medical foam, a substance that was in a can that they could spray into wounds. Once sprayed into the wound, the foam would disinfect while it expanded, which stopped bleeding. If only this invention existed in real life.

Except it did! It’s called the XStat, by RevMedx. The XStat is a large syringe filled with small sponges that contain a disinfectant. To use the product, all you have to do is place the nozzle on the wound and press on the plunger to inject the sponges into the wound. The sponges then expand and clot the site in a matter of seconds. This is extremely helpful since in most gunshot wounds, bleeding out is the main cause of death. As of right now, the XStat is marketed towards the military, but can also be used in any emergency situation. Who knew that such a great idea could come from a Sci-Fi book for children?

Stripe is a startup by two brothers, Patrick and John Collison,  who noticed a significant pain in the world of business. This pain is that small startups don’t have an easy way of making payments when they begin, and Stripe chose to fix this. Using just seven lines of code, the Collison brothers managed to create a payment system that was an perfect for businesses like Uber, Airbnb, and even Amazon, who now uses Stripe for all of their transactions. Because of this, both Patrik and John are one of the youngest billionaires on the planet.

The Collison brothers entrepreneurial success lies in the need they saw for small businesses, where an easy payment form is absolutely necessary since you have a limited amount of resources in a startup. The main reason this need even existed is because PayPal was the previous way to handle transactions, and PayPal had not evolved to fit the current market since its creation. In this sense, not only did Stripe succeed, but PayPal needed to fail to make way for Stripe. This is exemplified in the decision of PayPal’s co-founders wanting to be part of Stripe. Sometimes a lack of attention by a business can lead to new opportunities for a young entrepreneur.