Blake Ross is an insanely interesting person. His creation of Mozilla Firefox, the web browser, has helped push the technology behind the Internet forward. Even when he was a child, he had a penchant for computers. His interest in computers was furthered when Netscape, a leading company in Internet browsers, released the open source codes for their Navigator browser, and asked developers to critique and improve it. Ross jumped at this opportunity and began to send in revisions for the Netscape code. Not too long after, Netscape offered him an internship position, despite Ross only being 14 years old. Through his internship, Ross realized that the browsers of the day, Internet Explorer and Navigator, weren’t fulfilling the need that people wanted. He saw them from an outsiders perspective: frustration. Although both offered many features and such, neither were able to make the experience cohesive and smooth for the customers. Realizing this, Ross teamed up with David Hyatt and they worked at night to develop a better browser system. They started from scratch, and developed what became Mozilla Firefox. When the duo approached the bigwigs at Netscape, Firefox was rejected because it didn’t offer nearly as many features as Navigator, while basically the same interface. For Ross, however, that was the point. Eventually, the project was relegated to the Mozilla Foundation, where Firefox was first published. Ross made sure to make it open source as well, thereby allowing users to create add-ons and other useful patches. After the success of Firefox, Ross started a company called Parakey, whose primary focus was to integrate the web with the desktop interface. In 2007, Parakey was bought by Facebook, and Ross was promoted to director of product at Facebook. He worked there for 6 years, and resigned in 2013. Blake Ross is definitely a premier programmer and given he is only 29, he is probably going to be a huge part of the programming future in years to come.

When Andrew Grauer was a sophomore at Cornell University, he tore his lateral meniscus and had to use crutches to get around. This made it difficult to get to class, especially in the winter weather. Grauer realized he wasn’t going to be able to go to some classes, so he asked around for class notes so that he could stay up on his studies. That prompted him to question why there wasn’t a website that students could access to get notes for their classes. And thus, Course Hero was born. Course Hero compiles notes and study tools from over 4500 different universities and schools for students to use. Today, the site has over 7 million different documents of information. This enables students to keep up on classes even if they are unable to attend, or if they are having trouble with a subject. Course Hero also has 24/7 access to online tutors, ensuring that if a student has a problem, it can be reviewed and discussed, helping with understanding of tougher concepts. In the beginning, Grauer ran the company out of his parents basement but after a few months out of college, Grauer and his two brothers raised money to get the business going, and were able to secure investments in 2010 that amounted to around $1.5 million. Now solidly positioned in the market, Grauer is focused on making his business last for a long time into the future.

Fred Ehrsam is a millennial entrepreneur whose idea could revolutionize online payments. Ever since a friend from Duke University introduced him to the idea of bitcoins, Ehrsam has voraciously researched about them. Ehrsam is the co-founder of a company called Coinbase, a bitcoin brokerage agency that behaves like a bank for bitcoins. A bitcoin is an electronic form of currency that Ehrsam and his partner, Brian Armstrong, believe will be embraced as wholeheartedly as e-mail. The basic concept for Coinbase is a place where consumers can purchase and store bitcoins, which are available at any time to be used as a substitute for money. Coinbase will keep track of the codes that correspond to your bitcoins, making sure that you can access your money, as well as keeping them extremely secure from hackers and other people trying to steal your money. Ehrsam and Armstrong are trying to ameliorate the bitcoin’s name, since it is typically associated with underhanded black market Internet interactions. They point out that with bitcoins, credit cards could become obsolete because bitcoins do not require personal information, merely the code that corresponds to your specific bitcoin. Instead of having to type out a lot of personal information and risking credit card fraud, a consumer would be able to simply input their bitcoin code and continue on with the purchase without having to share sensitive personal information. Information breaches like the one at Target recently could become a thing of the past.

Lani Lazzari is an inspiring person. She began her company, Simple Sugars, not to bring in huge revenues, or even to get back at the large corporate beauty producers for their overpriced and highly valued merchandise. Lani began her company because she wanted beauty products that she could use on herself. She has a condition called eczema, which flared up and caused rashes when she used other products because of their artificial chemical make-up. Lani wanted to make a product that was all-natural: one that she was able to use on her sensitive skin. So, in 2005, Lani researched the best way to create a solution to her artificial product problem and created a scrub that no longer makes her skin irritated. After she successfully created an all-natural solution, she let her friends and family try the scrubs. They loved them so much, Lani decided to take her idea to the next level, and her company, Simple Sugars was born. I heard about Lani in 2013, when she was on the TV show, Shark Tank. Lani is from Pittsburgh, my hometown, and went to a high school near to mine, so my curiosity was piqued when I heard about her appearance. On Shark Tank, Lani exhibited professionalism equal to someone who had been in the industry for a long time. She knew her company inside and out, top to bottom, and was able to provide accurate, concise explanations to each one of the ‘Shark’s’ questions. Surprisingly, she was only 19 years old at the time, and already was running a successful business. Her success and drive are things to be admired from all potential millennial entrepreneurs.