A good friend of mine made a unique business last summer. Josh Barham is a North Carolinian and a sophomore here at Grove City. Instead of interning, Josh Barham made Adirondack chairs. For those of you who aren’t from the Appalachians, Adirondack chairs look like this

Josh purchased wood at a discount from one of the local lumber companies and hand crafted each chair. The chairs took about 20 hours each to make, including the weatherproof finish. He didn’t tell me how much money he made, but he turned a profit over the summer with his one man business. Although it was not as glamorous as starting uber, Josh found a need in the market and satisfied it.

Nick D’Aloisio was only 12 years old when he taught himself to code, and had coded several apps by the time he was 15. Nick saw a problem with how people consume news: we have so much information at our fingertips that it would be impossible to read even a tiny fraction of it, much less all of it. Nonetheless, it was often necessary to read full articles because summaries often left out important information or were just generally hard to read. At 15, he got his first investor for his app Summly, an app that uses an algorithm designed by D’Aloisio to summarize news in a way that was both thorough and easy to read. The app was published in December of 2011 and immediately took off. Yahoo aquired it in March 2013 for $30 million, making D’Aloisio one of the youngest self-made millionaires. D’Aloisio won Wall Street Journal’s “Innovator of the Year” award in 2013, was named to Forbes “30 under 30,” and received many other awards for his innovation and work with Yahoo. Now 21, he studies at Oxford University.

Brian Fisher was by all means a successful businessman. He served as Executive Vice President for a start up financial firm that grew to $1.1 billion in assets before it was bought out. Rather than returning to the world of business, Brian decided to use his skills to help a cause that he was more passionate about: the pro-life movement. There are about 7,942,623 pro-life organizations in America, so Brian looked to what he could provide that would be unique. In 2007, he founded The Human Coalition (formerly called Pro-life Online). The Human Coalition uses technologies like Google Analytics and other Search Engine Optimization tools to promote pro-life options to abortion minded women. Brian and his team work to ensure that when women are searching for a pregnancy test or ultrasound that local pregnancy medical centers are featured as prominently as abortion providers. In a world where customers often research (and decide) on a service/product online, this unique approach has helped save thousands of lives. Also they have awesome stickers.

If you have been outdoors much at all, you know that the hammock market is dominated by one name brand: Eagle Nest Outfitters. (Caleb Arisman wrote an excellent piece on Enos, which you can read here.) Enos are portable and durable, but a hammock and straps could cost you $100 or more. Michael Whiteley saw that hammocking was becoming very popular but realized that a lot of the hammocks were way overpriced. He set out to make a quality hammock at half the price of the other guys, and Bear Butt Hammocks was born. They sold their first hammock last November and have not looked back. Soon they were selling 300 hammocks a day. Their hammocks are $35, but perhaps the most unique portion of their value proposition is their  “Way too easy money back promise” Per their website:

“Hot diggity that means that at any time for any reason – seriously.. any time and any reason you aren’t stoked with your Bear Butt Gear or a ninja comes by and chops it to pieces. We will give you a FULL REFUND or a REPLACEMENT. Bam!  That is pure respect right there… Shaaaaaambamskies!”

Given the prevalence of ninja attacks, it’s no wonder that Bear Butt Hammocks is exploding as a leading alternative to more pricey hammock brands.