Hart Main had an idea for a fundraiser for his sisters school. Main’s idea was to have a candle that have a “Manly” scent in a soup can. Main started his business in 2010 at the young age of 13. How did Main get the soup cans? they were originally bought at the grocery store and eaten, but as production grew friends and family who bought candles were being asked to wash them out once they were done with the candles. Rather than eating the soup Main can up with an idea to donate the soup to food banks. In 2011, Main donated 200 cans of soup to soup kitchens in Lima and the empty cans were used to fill up with wax. The empty cans was expected to last about 5 months. Main has given 100,000 cans of soup and 35,000 dollars to 25 soup kitchens in four states to this date. Not long after Main started up his business a Columbus News station broadcast the story of Mains business. After the story was picked up by the the Associated Press, ManCans had 1,600 orders for 4,800 candles. By the spring of 2011, Mains candle manufacturing was moved from his kitchen to a warehouse space that was rented out. Five employees were hired to help him make the candles. In January 2014, ManCans went into full production after Main was approached by the Beaver Creek Candle Company in Lisbon to manufacture and distribute the candles. This is were ManCans are still being made today. ManCans are now in 150 stores across the United States of America.

Ben Silbermann attended Yale and he liked to collect things like stamps, insects, or anything else you can name. he studied medicine and political science in college. Silbermann and his college friends Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp starting working on a site on which people could show collections of things they were interested in, on a interactive pin-board format. Pinterest has 20 million unique visitors a month and 138 million in funding. They started on Pinterest in November 2009. Silbermann and his friends coded dozens of versions of the pin screen before selecting and launching Pinterest in 2010. Nine months after Pinterest launched there was still under 10,000 users on the site and a lot of them were not using it every day. Who does Pinterest host on their site? Pinterest host men’s style enthusiasts, architects, yogis, and suburban moms pinning diy projects and ruffled bloomers on chubby toddler butts. Silbermann is the CEO of one of the worlds top social networks, Pinterest which is valued at 1.5 billion dollars. A study founded Pinterest to surpass Facebook in terms of retail outlets or brands that fans “follow” or “like”. A survey was conducted by PriveGrabber, a price comparison site, and this survey found out that 21% of Pinterest users polled had purchased items they spotted on the site. More than 250 million people each month are now using Pinterest to discover and do what they love. Pinterest helps people find an inspiration for everything from a hobby to a new look. People on Pinterest rate ads on Pinterest 1.4 times more relevant and useful than those on other platforms. Pinterest has created a platform which people love to go on and do not mind ads and the ads are more helpful them usual. People can also find things that interest them and save them and potentially buy that product because it was on Pinterest.

Catherine at a young age realized that it was difficult to write essays effectively while filling out college applications. Catherine and her brother Dave came up with digitizing high school year books. Catherine and her brother launched MyYearBook.com and within the first week 400 of her high schools friends signed up. MyYearBook.com has over 32 million users today and 20,000 people each day use it. MyYearBook has a revenue of 32 million dollars today. Catherine looked up to her brother Geoff, he was 11 years older then she was and he already started a pretty successful start-up company. Catherine thought “If he can do it so can i.” Catherine is one of MyYearBooks most active user. She is very involved with her company and gives any new member a friend request. In 2006 MyYearBook.com had a million users, but they were faced with a problem. They were not making any money. Geoff asked one of his previous investors that he had at his old start-up for a donation, and his investor gave him a sizable one. They took this money and hired employees (Mostly engineers). They also got their first office space as well. MyYearBook had to adapt to the changes that were happening. they had to adopt messages to their website since Facebook was becoming a popular trend. In 2010 MyYearBook had 23 million dollars in revenue. They decided to go global since most of their users were North American. In 2011 they merged with Quepasa making it a 100 million deal, which became 18 million in cash and the rest in stocks. Geoff is now the COO of MyYearBook since Facebook does not really conduct business global. Catherine is now the vice president of Brand strategy and wants to come up with a new mission to take MyYearBook.com to the next level.

Spiegel and Murphy created the majority of their app which was first called Picaboo in 2012. Their headquarters was at Spiegels dad’s house in the palisades. Murphy worked long 18 hour days to develop a prototype, Murphy is still the author of much of snapchat’s code to this day. In Spiegel’s spent his senior year of college trying to promote the app in-between classes. Once they graduated Murphy took a day job. Snapchat’s growth increased greatly towards the end of 2012. Snapchat loaned Murphy and Spiegel 5 million each in 2014. In 2016 Murphy salary was 250,000 which was only half of Spiegel’s, Now that Snapchat went public each co-founder’s stake in the company is worth at least 5.4 billion apiece.  Snapchat wen public on March 2, 2017 at a roughly 33 billion valuation. At least 200 million users used the latest generation of AR lenses in the first two weeks after its release in April. Spiegel revamped the Android app which boosted daily snaps by 7%, Snapchat is more popular than Facebook and Instagram across that demographic. Snapchat is used by 75% of 13-34-year old’s in the us. There are 203 million daily users today a 13 million increase from the previous quarter. Snapchat adjusted loss per share was 6 cents per share. They exceeded Wall Street’s expectations of 360.75 million. Spiegel and Murphy had a combined 720 million after hours on Snapchat. Since the start of 2019 Snapchat’s stock has risen more than 160%.

       Many of us know Jessica for her acting career from being in “Meet the Fockers” and “Fantastic Four.” Why would Jessica want to become a entrepreneur when she has acting? She ran into a problem when she had newborns, she realized that she was having a allergic reaction to most of the baby products that she was using.

      Jessica wanted to come up with new products that could be harmless products for newborns. Jessica started writing a book about her experience and that lead her to a environmental scientist names Christopher Gavigan. Christopher was driven to do the same thing that Jessica was so they decided to team up and start the Honest Company. Jessica and Christopher pitched their idea to Brian Lee in 2009 but Lee turned the away saying ” it was not very promising.” Jessica and Christopher did not give up they went back to research and came back to Lee in 2012 when Lee decided to join them and launch Honest Company.

Honest Company would sell baby products that can provide families with five quintessential products of their choice for 35.95 for only a month. These products include bath and body, diapers, vitamins, feeding, gifts, to cleaning, and everything that a baby needs. Honest Companies made first of its 80% of its sales online. Honest Company soon reached deals with target which then distributed their products through chains including Buy Buy Baby, Whole Foods, Nordstrom, and Costco. The Honest Company raised 530 million dollars over seven rounds of funding. Honest Company made 12 million dollars in revenue in 2012 and drew to 150 million in 2014. In 2015 Honest Company hit the 1 billion dollar net value, despite people telling Jessica that her idea does not match her “sexy” image and the business would fail.

Jessica is still making a great deal of money today despite people telling her that she would fail in the business world. Jessica says that acting is easier to do because in the business world you relay on the business to support your life and family.