Many women first become aware of how prevalent chemicals are in items used day-to-day when they first become mothers. The same happened to Jessica Alba. When she first became a mother she read about how many toxins were in diapers and other items used on babies. Rather than using them anyway, she wanted to create products free from anything that could harm her children.

Alba created the Honest Company. Though she already had a name that could lead her to instant success, she still struggled. She wasn’t a natural business leader, and the majority of the board she hired were men. They didn’t always see eye to eye because she saw the end goal, while they thought more of the finances and timeline.

Eventually the business she was dreaming of was built. Not only did she have safe diapers, but sunscreen, laundry detergent, and other natural products.

Lyft started out as “Zimride” after Logan Green made a trip to Zimbabwe and people were having to share rides there. Zimride was a carpooling network. John Zimmer noticed this page on Facebook and thought it was interesting because it was close to his name, and he had also previously thought of starting a carpooling service. Zimmer connected with Green through social media, and eventually the two of them met up in New York City. A few years later, they moved out to Silicon Valley to focus on Zimride.

They first decided to focus on college campuses as it’s common for a student to not have a car, but need a ride somewhere. They had raised a lot of money for Zimride but didn’t see nearly as much usage as they had hoped. They stopped for a minute and thought, “If we were starting Zimride today, what would we do?”

They decided to make it an app for ease of use. Instead of calling it Zimride, they started “Lyft”. In place of a carpool service, they made it an easier way to get a taxi. Zimmer and Green saw their business pick up much faster.

Daniel Ek founded Spotify in 2006 to eliminate paying per song costs. He thought consumers would be willing to listen to music for free if he granted a certain amount a skips and had ads every couple songs. In this scenario the ads would make him some money. For those who want to be able to listen to any song they want without interruption he made it possible to pay $5-10 a month for unlimited music. In the very beginning of this process he was nervous he wouldn’t reap a profit from this. He needed a lot of users in order to break even with the song costs.

Despite the risks, Ek pursued the idea. Spotify launched in 2008 and rapidly became popular. Ek was receiving investments from venture capitalists, and many music lovers converted from iTunes to Spotify. By 2012 Spotify had 20 million active users, and in 2017 it had 160 million. The music streaming service grew rapidly and even forced Apple to create an identical service in order to not lose all of its iTunes users.

I personally am not someone who cares about Instagram “aesthetic”, but back in middle school I sure did care about how my MySpace profile looked. MySpace had tons of features for it’s users to choose from to make their profile unique. You had a default picture, a song or playlist, an “About Me” that you literally had to learn computer coding if you didn’t want it to look boring, Top 8 Friends box, and more information boxes. You could change the outline of the boxes and font colors so everything was exactly what you wanted.

Behind all the boxes was a background picture which was sometimes frustrating because all the boxes covered the majority of the picture. It seemed pointless to make your background an actual picture with people because hardly anyone could see it. Ashley Qualls was also frustrated by this and began designing background layouts for MySpace.

Ashley was talented in art and graphic design. She started a website called “WhateverLife” where she sold her layouts. She was passionate about creating these designs and was even compensated for it at the young age of 14. Her designs weren’t photos, but patterns she created. It didn’t matter if some of the profile boxes were covering the image.

Ashley made tons of different designs that would match the personality of any person using MySpace. She didn’t just target males or females, or people who love sports versus people who love music, she created layouts for every type of person she could think of.

Her business grew rapidly. The website was receiving 7 million visitors per month. Soon, Verizon Communications, a company traded on the New York Stock Exchange, wanted to buy WhateverLife for $1.5 million. Ashley refused because she was passionate about her work. She was making enough money and wanted to continue what she was doing.

Today, there isn’t much of a need for MySpace layouts. Ashley adapted and still continues to make graphic designs for other social media purposes. Her website is still visited frequently.

Hart Main was 13 when his younger sister was selling candles as a fundraiser. He realized they all smelled feminine and joked about making manly scented candles. When his mom heard him say that, she encouraged him to produce his idea.

Main began mixing waxes and oils in his own home attempting to make these candles. He went for scents like bacon, fresh cut grass, and brand new baseball glove–all scents that smell good and appeal to men. He called his newly produced candles “ManCans”. He thought up other scents, like “Money to Burn”, but kept in mind that his target market most likely wouldn’t want a room to smell like it’s burning.

His business grew quickly. Main and his mother would make candles in their kitchen, and soon had to find a new space for ManCans. As for their materials, he purchases his oils from Ohio, but the cans they come in make his company stand out. Hart Main purchases cans of soup, donates them to local soup kitchens, then comes back to retrieve the cans once they are empty so he can put his candles in them.

Main has been selling his candles at a retail price of $9.50. His mother reported that he is very hands on with his business and treats as if he were a 50 year old CEO. He talks with his distributors and suppliers, and directly resolves any issues he comes across. At a young age of 13, Hart became an entrepreneur, and continues to produce ManCans today.

In 2006, the summer after Jake Klinvex’s freshman year at the University of Rochester, he interned at his uncle’s company, Select International. Jake was pinned the task of contacting current and potential clients through email so the company could do business with them. Jake noticed the emails he sent were boring and the clients probably get these kinds of requests all the time. He wanted his request to stand out. He thought, “What if we send a video rather than a lengthy email?”

Now, in 2006 YouTube and other forms of social media were not as popular. The iPhone had not been released, and video quality on flip phones were very low. It was a little more of a task to take a video. Jake got a camera, set up a website, and figured out how upload videos here. He had his uncle, who was the CEO of Select International, speak in the video. Once completed he created a unique link for the video, and sent it to their clients.

They immediately noticed a huge turn around in responses. Clients loved the videos, being able to listen rather than having to read, hearing from the leader of the company rather than a message from an intern, and sensing the personality in a lengthy business message.

Jake ran with this business idea. His sophomore year, he transferred to Villanova University where he worked on improving, what he called, Persontation. He wanted to be able to attach the video right in the email rather than linking it, to eliminate a step. Jake wanted the video to feature text and slides, images and files. Computer science was not his specialty so he got a group together to figure out what he was not able to accomplish.

Before graduating, Persontation gained a new client, eMoney Advisors. The CEO was intrigued by the idea and invited Jake, and his 2 other teammates to Napa Valley to present about Persontation. After this conference, eMoney bought out Persontation, surprising the team of college students. They accepted jobs here following graduation to further their invention.

After a few years, Jake left eMoney Advisors, moved back to Pittsburgh, and connected with an old high school friend. The two of them started an app called LoyalTree, a play on words for “loyalty”. This app was a reward system. It printed a QR code on your receipt that you scanned with your phone. So many points got you some kind of reward. Many Pittsburgh restaurants bought into this, but so did the Pittsburgh Penguins. If you’ve ever been to a Pens game you may have used the app “Pens Points”. This was the app created by LoyalTree. This spread to other restaurants and sports teams, and in 2016, 10 years after the invention of Persontation, LoyalTree was acquired by a Boston Company, SessionM.

Jake took a boring task during his college internship, and made it exciting for all parties involved. Some interns would have just done what their boss told them to do and then moved on, but Jake recognized what he was doing was not effective and changed that. What’s interesting is this wasn’t a problem Jake was wrestling with in his daily life, and come August he would have never had to worry about it again. In addition, Select was not asking for innovation or a special way to reach out to clients, but because Jake was unhappy with the lack of responses he got, he created a new professional internet video product that would change the way businesses connect.