Some build one great company that they lead and love their entire lives others build several mediocre companies that do pretty good. However once in a while you get an entrepreneur who builds several great companies. That is the case of Andrew Mason. Andrew started his first business at the young age of fifteen as a simple bagel delivery service that did fairly well. After graduating college Andrew started his second business The Point which allowed for activists, grassroots and protestors to be able to organize and collaborate the most efficient and best possible way. Several years later in 2007 he created the company Groupon which allowed companies to connect more directly with customers to allow for special deals and promotions. The company became so successful that in 2011 Google attempted to buy the company for $6 billion. Mason declined and currently Groupon is still growing bigger and bigger each day. Andrew shows that one should never be content with mediocrity and we should all strive to be better and better that is what a true entrepreneur does.
Author Archive for MAYSLC20
There is always a way to do something better, a more efficient, cheaper or easier way to achieve a goal as time goes on. Technology gets better, people can look at an obstacle in a new way that has yet to be seen. That is what John Zimmer did when he co-founded Lyft. John used to drive home from college everyday with four spare seats in his car to and from college and he came up with an idea. Why not rent out those seats? Then he realized that could be an app. A way for people with spare time, a car and some need for a little extra cash to offer that service like a taxi service to those without a car who didn’t want to be in some dirty weird smelling taxi. So that is just what John did when he created Lyft. Lyft took off very quickly and people loved the idea from both points of view the customer and the driver. It was a brilliant idea. It showed that a company that basically monopolized the transport business could be beaten that there were ways of creating a taxi service that benefits everyone. That’s thinking like an entrepreneur.
Not every veteran stays in the military service, some go off to work hard and live simple lives, others like Evan Hafer go on to do amazing work and create shockingly successful company. Evan spent 20 years in military service fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile Evan become a coffee master learning how to make the best roasts possible using different techniques from locals and old friends back home. After his deployment he came home and created Black Rifle Coffee. Black Rifle Coffee is a premium coffee company offering a premium American brewed coffee but their patriotism doesn’t start their as the company names their coffee after different rifles and donating to different patriotic groups and police precincts in need. BRC offers exceptional deals for any coffee drinker who is a firm patriot. Evan leads the way in new entrepreneur patriotism.
Sean Rad created one of the most popular and possibly most effective at it’s goal app in the world; Tinder. Now granted what a lot of users use Tinder for is another issue entirely but that was not Sean’s goal. His goal was to make a fun and easy to use dating app and he succeeded. Sean saw that there was a pain within the modern day social media dating niche and he discovered how to fix that pain and create an easier option for everyone involved so they could get over the hump of meeting online. Sean has stepped down from CEO of Tinder to look into creating other apps to increase their portfolio as Tinder already has marked its immense success.
Although the people on Sean’s app can sometimes be less than desired with how they use the app their is a lot to learn from Sean. Sean was supposed to market another companies app which he did but he took advantage of the showcase for the other app to unveil his app. He worked for someone else and used thos opportunities to create something even better than what he had before.
Sean shows us that if or when we see an opportunity we need to take it. That we only get so many opportunities in life and that when we take advantage very profitable opportunities can come out for us to take advantage of so that we may succeed in our own way. The way that God wants us to succeed.
Jack Kim is a modern-day entrepreneur that shows age does not mean success. Jack founded Benelab a non-profit search engine that creates donations to the less fortunate. As well as to show the less fortunate that philanthropy is easy and accessible to anyone willing to put in the effort to succeed at it. He currently lives in Seattle and is finishing up high school while running his own search engine, but the craziest part of it is he still is in high school and the entire search engine is run by fellow classmates and anyone who is not an adult. His goal is to hit one hundred thousand dollars in donations before he graduates from high school. This exemplifies the idea that with passion age truly does not matter. It is also incredible to think about how Jack created a niche of in need philanthropists that now have new opportunities and possibilities.
Jack gives me hope that age truly does not matter when it comes to innovation. That we can take a minute to look around and really find a way to help out those around us in new never before used ways that even in helping people we can have our own uniqueness and freedom to demonstrate our own creativity and individuality. That we are endowed by our creator to go out to serve but in our own uniqe way. That in of itself is beautiful.
Blake Ross was born in 1985 and from the early age of ten he loved to design and create websites and even one or two of his own video games just for the fun of it. While in high school Blake began working for Mozilla. Blake then went on to study at Stanford University to learn Net Scape. While learning on it he realized how poorly it worked along with Internet Explorer, so he decided with his co-worker, Dave Hyatt and the backing of Mozilla he created Mozilla Firefox. Blake is a great example of an entrepreneur because he saw how bad all the other options for web browsing was, even his parents had explained their frustration over how bad it was to him. He saw a problem that he could fix. He took his chance and now owns one of the most well known and most used web browsers in the world. He had a passion for web design that he used to fix other people’s pain and he adapted it to make it work better than the competition. He shows the true definition of a true millennial entrepreneur.
This inspires me to go out and create, to look for issues that people are having and find way to fix them and make them better than they are now. to go out and find trouble in whatever form that takes, to be able to innovate no matter the age and make the world just a little more innovative,