Mai Lieu is a young entrepreneur who escaped the vietnam war with her parents when she was very young. She knew that she had to prove herself to herself and her parents. She came up with this innovative idea to allow an individual at home to cut their own hair and make it look great with no extra tools. The idea is a form of clip that locks the hair in place and also has a level on it so that the user can confirm that the hair is level before they cut. She decided that wasn’t good enough, so she also came up with a line of products around this idea that do similar things. One that can be used on the eyes to move around eyelashes, one that can be used to line up nail polish perfectly, and others. She is a great thinker who ended up closing a deal with Lori on shark tank and how has that partnership as an asset in her business.
Author Archive for jordanad19
Heather Saffer is a young entrepreneur who reinvented icing. She notes how traditional icing is very bad for you containing lots of chemicals, aligines, and other unhealthy ingredients. Her non gmo, gluten free, allergen free, icing containing 50% less sugar is a premium product with a price tag of almost three times that of her competition. Despite that she has worked hard appearing on shark tank, cupcake wars, and many other social medias. She has developed cookbooks for her product and firmly believes that she has the best product on the market. At the very end of her college career, just six credits shy from graduating college with a psychology degree, Heather dropped out of school to chase her dream. She reached a deal on shark tank and with the help of Barbra, she is now seeing record sales and growth!
https://dollopgourmet.com/pages/meet-heather
At the young age of 12 Ehan Kamat came up with an idea to relieve foot pain. He found that medical professionals would often recommend rolling a frozen bottle of water on the foot in order to relieve paid. Ehan knew there had to be a better option. He started thinking and came up with the quicker, cleaner, less wasteful solution to this problem call solemender. The product is a refreezable wheel with a sticky base that allows for the user to have a less flexibility testing solution to this foot pain. This product solves both the requirement for cold and stretching in order to relieve pain. Ehan is very impressive. He speaks french and often listens to french music! He has friends who also are entrepreneurs. He mentioned in a comment that they do not do similar businesses to him so that it is not competitive, and just educational and fun!
At the young age of 4 years old Mikaila experienced not one, but two bee stings within a week. She developed a fear for bees as most children do under the circumstances. She then begun her fascination with bees learning all about them and what they do for the environment. Around this same time her grandmother brought Mikaila’s family the recipe for her famous flaxseed lemonade. Mikaliah thought “what if I can combine my love for these bees with my love for this lemonade?!” That is just what she did. From there she began the process of perfecting her lemonade with the sweet addition and next thing she knew she was on Shark Tank making a deal with Daymond John! With her new partner on her side business started to take off. She began having a much easier time getting into large retailers and even restaurants! This business seems to be taking off and I can’t wait to see where Mikaila takes it!
Trisha Prabhu was featured with her business, ReThink, when she was just 16 years old. She could not drive herself to the set, yet she had coded an app that would allow for a pop up message on a phone whenever key words are triggered suggesting cyber bullying. By the time she was featured on shark tank Trisa had also been invited to the white house, awarded by google, given numerous TED talk, and had been contacted by a phone carrier company about her product. On the show she was able to close a deal with Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner. The idea behind the app is that an individual would be attempting to leave a mean message on someone’s post, or text something mean. When this happens they will receive a pop up asking if they are sure they would like to proceed. Trisia claims that this small moment of reflection caused 93% of messages to be reworded in a nicer, more uplifting way. Trisha states on her website that she has reached over 1500 schools, 500,000 downloads, 5 million students impacted and over 1.1 million TED talk advocacy. Trisha is a very motivated young entrepreneur. All you have to do is watch Shark Tank season 8 episode 1 and you will agree with me! She has some big plans for this business, and I’m sure that she will do very well. 
Ben Stern is a young individual who appeared on shark tank to close a deal with Mark Cuban in 2016. His product, Nohbo, is a small one time use shampoo drop encased in very thin eco friendly plastic. Ben mentions that he heard “depressing facts” about waste from the bathroom in a science class and knew something had to change. He went home from school to see his mother using a tide pod and the idea hit him! What if he could replicate the tide pod, only for shampoo. Ben did just that. He started with a powdered product, but quickly pivoted to the small ball filled with shampoo. Ben was able to lock in that deal with Mark Cuban for $100,000 in exchange for 25% of Nobho. In an article, Ben states that Cuban has since then invested much more money and also states that business is thriving. This young entrepreneur is someone who is motivated, learns from his mistakes, and wants to make the
world a better place.
Caleb Johnson is a man who has had a history of entrepreneurship. He started his first business at nine years old. Young Caleb bought and sold beanie babies, starting by purchasing his sisters collection for $100 by middle school, he had turned this into a job earning him $50,000 per year! By age 15 he had become the youngest American to be appointed the CEO of a tokyo based company! He even had a book written called “15-Year-Old CEO.” He continued with business ventures through middle school and by the end of high school he had over $1,000,000 in his bank account! After this he went to Virginia tech for one year before realizing that, because of this love for learning, he had to drop out of school! He continued starting businesses. He even started a card company which sold for 10 million dollars to other venture capitalists. Today, he resides as the chairman and CEO of Magic City Ford Lincoln which is an auto dealership in Virginia. It has been in his family for four generations now making his business one of the few fourth generation car dealerships still in business! He continues with his love for investing in real estate and his own projects. He also loves to invest in various start-ups across many different industries.
In 2013 six friends were playing spikeball while on a beach in Hawaii. The game of spikeball was not well known, but was manufactured by Tomy games years ago in the 1980’s and 90’s. These six friends had numerous people come up to them and inquire about the game, how to play, and where to buy it while they were playing on the beach. At this point it was not a well known game. After finding out there was no current patent on the game the six friends were able to get together 100,000 dollars to start the journey of reviving the sport of spikeball. The main player in this journey was Chris Ruder. An ad salesman, Chris would work at his day job until 5pm, spend time with his children and wife until 9pm, and then work on spikeball until 2am. He did this every day for five years. At this point Chris had built the business to earn a staggering 1 million dollars in revenue per year. In 2014, the team was able to work with producers on shark tank and in May of 2015 their episode aired. They struck a deal however, it fell apart before the show even aired because the deal involved creating a Spiderman spikeball set with marvel. Ruder felt like this made spikeball a toy and not a sport. Even though they did not get a deal, they got the popularity. As of 2018, the company was bringing in 15 million in revenue per year. They pay $13 dollars per unit and sell the product for 59 dollars so there is a very high margin to be earned.
I really like how these entrepreneurs saw an opportunity and jumped on it. They really capitalized on this idea that was invented before them. It appears that the quest for money, and the goal of creating something for themselves drives them. The very interesting thing about these guys to me is how they did not invent much of anything rather,, they capitalized on poor marketing and made the sport fun. That is what sold units. They definitely have a drive. Ruder would work into early morning hours while he had a family for five years straight! That and their vision for something to be better than it is makes them perfect entrepreneurs. They inspire me because it reminds me that there is a lot of ideas out there that can be revitalized like this one! What really inspires me about these guys is their drive and effort they put into the sport. Through looking into these entrepreneurs I have found what it means to have determination and not give up!
The sport of spikeball took off in the mid 2010’s but the idea was originally invented in 1989. An entrepreneur by the name of Jeff Knurek had a degree in Industrial Design and Art Education and knew he wanted to be a toy inventor. He took a job with a toy creation firm in which his job was to come up with possible ideas for toys and then to pitch them to his team. This idea of spikeball started when Knurek originally pitched an idea of a “pitch back” net. This idea was very primitive. he started looking at how to make this a game and explored different objects that could be thrown off the net. One source says that he explored everything from large balls to square figures until he settled on the small round ball that we know today. He prototyped this idea with a hula hoop and then eventually with PVC pipe. He continued to build this idea until Tomy games bought it in 1989.
Looking at Knureks story, I really like how he took an idea that was nothing and built it into a game. Seeing how he came up with the ball and the round net is very motivating! It seems as though he was driven by his own motives. This was his job to come up with toys and he took it upon himself to come up with something great. This idea was interesting similarly because it was his job to come up with this idea! The firm he worked for seems very interesting. It encourages its employees to go out on their own and make their ideas great. Knuerek clearly has an entrepreneurial drive because of how he took this idea already to market. The thing that really strikes me about this story was how innovative this idea is. I can not find anything like the game of spikeball out there. He took the idea of volleyball and completely flipped it… literally! The way this entrepreneur motivated me is in originality. It shows me that I do not need to just slightly change something out there, or do something cheaper. Knuerek shows me that I could completely change how something is done!
If you would like to learn more about his story, check out his interview! https://roundnetworld.com/blogs/roundnet-players-around-the-world/jeff-knurek