When people think of high school dropouts, they do not generally associate them with great success. They are heavily looked down upon in society. This is mainly for good reason, considering the statistics. If people with a college degree make 65% more money than people with just a high school degree, imagine the disparity between those with a college degree and those without a high school degree. However, some high school dropouts do make it far in life.

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One such person is Australia-born Ben Pasternak, previous owner of Nuggs. At fifteen years old, Pasternak dropped out of his school. With a large interest in programming, Pasternak harnessed his skills and turned them into success without the help of school. By the time he had turned eighteen years old, Pasternak had build and sold a video-chat app called Monkey. It had 10 million users at the time.

Pasternak’s next business venture, Nuggs, has become even more successful, raising over fifteen million dollars from Lerer Hippeau, Alexis Ohanian and McCain Foods. Nuggs is a plant-based nugget brand that is vegan-friendly. Though Pasternak is no longer the CEO of Nuggs, he continues to serve on the board as a Chairman.

Alexis de Bernede and Marius Jacob are the gen z, French entrepreneurs behind Darmo Art. Darmo Art is a company that helps support young artists and get their names out there since it can be difficult when they are just starting out. The idea for the company came to Bernede and Jacob in 2017, while they were in college studying art history. The two had been best friends since childhood, so it made sense that they would go into a business like this together. For Jacob, the roots for this business venture were planted in his childhood. He was born into a family of antique dealers and often went to art museums when he was a young boy.

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The actual startup of the business was in 2018. At just 19 years old, Bernede and Jacob founded Darmo Art. They started with only 2,000 dollars and a goal to find young artists, choose a few to build lasting relationships with, and support them all year long, providing them with places to showcase their art. Since the two were just college students, they could not pay for a gallery. Because of this, they began hosting pop-up shows.

Today, Bernede and Jacob have their own gallery and have helped many young French artists to get their names into the world of art.

Picture this: it’s 10:30 pm and you are in your dorm room scrambling to get a project done by midnight. The cut-off time for the assignment is quickly approaching, and you’re not even halfway done. You’re exhausted, your palms are sweating, and suddenly, you realize you’re starving. You check the time. 10:55. Man, time passes quickly when you’ve got an assignment due at midnight. You try to refocus, but then your stomach starts growling. You have no food in your dorm. You know that if you leave to get food, you’ll be wasting precious time, but you can’t focus with your stomach growling like that…What should you do?

This problem could be easily solved if you had a company like Duffl at your service! Duffl is a company run by students, for students. It is a student-owned convenience store whose delivery drivers bring food right to your door with the help of their electric scooters. With the Duffl app, you can order a few snacks within a few minutes and have them at your door ASAP!

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The company was created around 2019 by UCLA college students, one of which being Robert Dong, the marketing manager and part of the original team that started the company. The leaders of the company are committed to having a “friend group vibe culture,” making sure to do everything they can to foster good relationships within the company and between customers and drivers. Since the company only hires students, there is a high chance that people may get the same delivery drivers often, allowing them to get to know each other. On top of that, each bag that is delivered has a hand-written message from the delivery driver, or “racer.”  The company pulls all of this together in their mission statement: “To empower students to better serve each other.”

From the variety of convenient products to the quick delivery time and great relationships, Duffl is a very successful company. Over the past few years, they’ve expanded from one location to seven. Unfortunately for myself and other Grove City College students, the closest Duffl store is in Texas. In that case, you’d better just lock in and get that assignment done…