As more and more people are born, the history of search engines becomes less and less known since Google has become the end all be all of most discussion on the topic. However there was a time when many different browsers were fighting for superiority over the early stages of the web. Interestingly enough internet explorer has always seemed to be terrible as in 2003 the frustration of having to use internet explorer led him to discovering and contributing to Netscape. However after sometime working on Netscape, Ross became unhappy with the project largely due to influence coming from AOL. At this point Ross was left with two choices, work on a project he dislikes or to adapt and create something new.

Given that this article is about innovation it comes as no surprise that Ross decided to develop something new and groundbreaking. Ross co-founded the Mozilla project with all of their focus going into the Firefox and Thunderbird (an email client that would go on to be big in it’s own right) projects. At only 19 years old, Ross released the Firefox browser and captivated many users getting over 100 million downloads in less than a year. Some of the more commonplace features in today’s brewers were developed an integrated into Firefox such as add blockers and tabbed browsing.

Overall, Ross’ journey is one of finding a source of frustration and deciding to innovate and create a solution to the frustration. Perhaps the most insane part of Ross’ story is that all his work on the early stages of development of his web browser were done when he was a teenager while his competitors who developed Google did so when they were in grad school. However the biggest lesson to take from this whole article is that Internet is such a problem that it inspired a 16 year old to start development on a browser that would outdo it in record time.

Not many people have heard of Sam Pilgrim and his mountain biking exploits, but in recent years he has become something of a spectacle. Born in 1990, Pilgrim was a normal kid living in England but something changed when he was 9 years old, he began riding bikes. It wouldn’t take home long to quickly become a fan favorite as in 2007 he won his first major competition. His career was only up from there winning a number of major competitions before eventually winning the FMB World Tour in 2013. Although his professional freeride career was very successful, he would truly come into his own when he made a YouTube channel under his namesake.

Most notable for a missing front tooth and his willingness to try nearly anything on a bike, Sam Pilgrim began to amass a following. Pilgrim can be seen riding some dangerous routes on some of the sketchiest bikes you’ve ever seen. Nobody had ever seen anything like this before, a crazy Englishman who can ride bikes better than anyone else, which makes sense why he amassed around 2 million subscribers. Eventually, he began to release his own merchandise and companies began to take notice of his videos. Large companies like Monster Energy, GoPro, and Canyon sponsored Pilgrim which gave him the opportunity to further push the envelope on his extreme style of riding.

Sam Pilgrim might not be the founder of a billion dollar company, but he found a way to gather people using the skills that only he had. Pilgrim built a channel around himself using only the skills he learned over many years of trying and failing. Pilgrim demonstrates the ability to find a niche market that has nobody within it, which in this case was a market that didn’t have an English guy who does flips and tricks with road bikes on dirt trails.

One of the most intelligent yet least talked about people in the tech industry is the CEO of Quora, Adam D’Angelo. Starting at a young age, D’Angelo showed his intelligence by winning medals in world computing Olympiad and algorithm coding competitions. It comes as no shock that D’Angelo would move on to bigger and better things as time went on. In 2004 when Facebook was just starting out D’Angelo was in the mix, serving as both the CTO and the vice president of engineering. After 4 years of working and developing at Facebook D’Angelo left because he had his sights set on his own company.

After leaving Facebook, D’Angelo invested his own money into developing Quora. Quora was noted early on as being a great place to ask questions because it was designed very well, something that doesn’t often happen with early websites. Quora quickly became a hit and in 2010 was becoming so popular that the servers were struggling to keep up with the traffic that their pages were getting. The most surprising aspect of Quora is that it still maintains relevance within todays day in age, even when competing against such robust search engines like Google. Quora’s success is largely in part due to the intelligence of D’Angelo and all that he learned from developing Facebook alongside Zuckerberg.

In today’s world, D’Angelo still has a pivotal role in many tech companies outside of Quora. He still maintains a close relationship to Facebook, regularly offering advice or suggestions to Zuckerberg (like the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook). D’Angelo also serves as a board member for OpenAI, one of the tech companies that has taken the world by storm with their GPT 3.5 chatbot otherwise known as ChatGPT. D’Angelo seems to have an eye for ideas that can shake the foundations of the tech industry as he has been at the center of many of the worlds most influential and lifechanging tech companies.

Andrew Spinks grew up playing video games and was greatly inspired by some of the games he played. One in particular sparked his interest, Minecraft, the open world game that many had come to know and love in their childhood. The difference between Andrew and others was that he decided he wanted to make something similar. Although passionate about making games, Andrew didn’t immediately jump into game development and instead had side projects that he would work on in his free time outside of being a software engineer.

However, one of his side projects “Terraria” started gaining popularity in it’s alpha and beta testing. Upon seeing his game become more popular, Andrew decided to create his own small game development studio “Re-Logic” that would help the growing pains of his game. Fast forward to today and Terraria has sold over 35 million copies across many different platforms becoming a fan favorite.

Re-Logic has now become a beacon for what is possible within the independent game development and publishing industry. Re-Logic has even gained so much notoriety in the gaming community to have weight in arguments with Googles “Stadia” division. Often times we see smaller companies like Re-Logic getting run over by large companies but Andrew has stayed true to his goal.  Andrew has created and abided by his own philosophy within the game industry of never “selling his soul” for any amount of money, which has become a light in dark time for many game development studios.

Andrew Spinks is a symbol of encouragement to young game designers who want to develop and publish their own games with the hopes of having millions of other people enjoy their creations. He also serves as a great example to younger developers by sticking to what he believes in even if it might be a tougher road to walk.

Probably one of the most mysterious names you’ll here within the entrepreneurial real is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto is actually a pseudonym that belongs to the creator or co-creators of Bitcoin. There are many guesses as to who they might be, but nothing concrete has been discovered to definitively say who Nakamoto really is. Though their real identity may be unclear, it is clear they’re a genius, as is evident through their work.

Nakamoto sought to create a decentralized digital currency that left behind the need of banks, payment processors, and governing bodies. The idea of a decentralized currency was nothing but a dream for the longest time but Nakamoto was able to bring that dream into reality. Built into it’s design are things like capped supply to mimic scarce resources and secure wallets that can be software or hardware based, not to mention the block chain structure of Bitcoin. By incorporating these concepts, Bitcoin became secure which is the biggest hurtle for convincing would be users of a digital currency. In order to get Bitcoin outside of a transaction you have to “mine” it. Mining consists of having a computer solve complex computational calculations that become increasingly difficult over time.

Now that we know a little of how it works we can truly appreciate the genius behind the idea. Never in anyone’s wildest dreams would the think of creating a new currency that could rival all other current currencies. However, many people have found the allure of using crypto currencies and have dedicated vast amounts of time, money, and other resources to attain Bitcoin. It takes a very smart and innovative mind to come up with an alternative to one of the oldest concepts in human history, currency. If nothing else, we also get hilarious stories of companies first accepting bitcoin and people buying what would later become 50,000 dollar pizzas with the amount of bitcoin they used.

Magnus Midtbø is a rock climber from Norway who competed at an elite level from the time he was a child. However, equally as impressive as his climbing career was his ability to create a brand surrounding his name and his craft.  Magnus retired from professional climbing in 2017 which also marked the time he began making his YouTube vlogs. Over time he amassed a huge following of almost 2 million subscribers who watched as he collaborated with countless other large YouTube names like Larry Wheels, Juji Mufu, and Eddie Hall. Magnus’ continued success on YouTube allowed him to branch out and make his own brand of active apparel called Rungne.

Creating his own brand allowed Magnus to let his creativity flow freely as he designed his own ideal active clothing that many others wanted. By taking advantage of his already large YouTube following, Magnus is able to advertise his brand in house instead of having to pay for advertising like many other smaller brands starting up. Magnus also wanted to differentiate his brand from other active brands by making his clothes have a more regal design while still maintaining the comfort of standard active clothing. Overall, I think that Magnus’ career has been full of great decisions to fill niches that many people didn’t know existed. He was able to think of creative ideas for vlogs that captivated an audience who had never seen anything like this done for the sport of rock climbing. His continued creativity opened up opportunities to make money and expand his influence further to the point of creating his own brand. Perhaps his biggest strength is making the most of what he has, Magnus was always a great climber but never a gold medalist on the pro level. In a sport like rock climbing it’s hard to get recognition unless your the top dog, so Magnus’ brilliance comes in the form of marketing himself even though he might not be the biggest name within his sport.