At just the age of 9 years old, Jelani Jones is running her business of bath products. the Spotsylvania County, Virginia, native learned how to make bath bombs, a tightly packed mixture of ingredients that fizzes and expels various scents and oils when wet, in school. Jelani had so much fun with the project that she went home to experiment on her own. She began selling her products to friends, family, and church members before starting up a facebook and etsy page. Today, Jelani’s Etsy page features 13 brightly colored bath bombs in different scents, as well as two handcrafted soap options. Her products, which start at $4.50, have received five-star reviews on Facebook. It has been tought, however that she is running a business while in school, but she has been doing great balancing. She not only learned to make her own products but has also learned how to formulate a business plan, all with budgeting here time and money. Her parents have helped out a lot as well, with orders. Time management is one of Jelani’s keys to success according to the nine year old. “Jelani is very confident, smart and insightful,” Crystal Jones said. “We want her to recognize that there are no limits to what she can accomplish with God, determination and a supportive village.” It is always really neat to see entrepreneurs starting to understand what it means to run a business, even in elementary school. Entrepreneurship might not be something she learns in school until college, so discovering the ins and outs of starting a business is a great head start. It will be interesting to see where Jelani goes and how she will continue to formulate new business ideas and ventures, because her first idea sure wont be her last. It seems she has a lot of drive and passion for entrepreneurship and will contribute a lot later on in life.

Raija Abdelaziz was walking to her car after a night out with her friends when she was approached by a group of men who began to yell inappropriate comments at her. She ran and made it to her car safely, shaken up from the incident, she began to think of what she could do to protect herself. A phone is not always the best form of protection, she looked for something that could be on a person at all times – nothing. So she created her own wearable tech that would call for help at the double press of a button, but the main goal was to also make it stylish as well. Two years later they took their product to the market as Invisawear, now the leading safety device manufacturer and one of the only to make jewelry. The ended up raising millions in funding in their first few years. Now they make hair accessories, key chains, and fitness bands. They also started to make some unisex versions because men need safety too. All devices have a hidden panic button on them and can be programmed to send GPS location services to emergency services. For example, a pre programmed text message is sent to five emergency contacts and 911 via ADT, a home security company. In three years of active sales they have sold over seventy thousand devices with twenty percent of profit being donated to the Beverly Carter Foundation. Abdelaziz’s goal is to prevent sexual assault completely and to make these devices a deterrent that it wont occur in the first place. This is a great example of finding a problem and searching to see if there is a solution and then creating your own solution. This one is even more important because the problem is such a pushing issue today.

Chelsee-Marie Pettit grew up in Canada and never really got to connect with her Anishinaabe roots. She never saw her Indigenous syllabics outside of museums and history books. One day, she thought she saw an Indigenous Syllabic on someone’s shirt, she was mistaken, but it sparked a whole new movement. Chelsee decided to create aaniin, a streetwear brand featuring syllabics, now a fashion boutique selling from over 20 other indigenous clothing lines. She has taken this opportunity to  reclaim her language and use her business as an opportunity to set a stage for other Indigenous designers. “I feel a lot more of an obligation to ensure what fashion is,” she says of her endeavour. “And to me, fashion is sustainability, handmade, very creative, and stirs emotion.” Chelsee explains that starting up was not that easy, but she was able to document her story on TikTok and Instagram which helped with a lot of growth in popularity of her business. “My goal has been to make connections with Indigenous communities and fill a gap she and too many other urban Indigenous Peoples have faced for too long.” Indigenous people dont really have that connection to a clothing brand or a coffee shop, what Chelsee is doing creates the opportunity for Indigenous people to gain that notoriety and embrace their heritage and culture. A lot of times peoples in Chelsee’s situation don’t have much to connect to their culture with, especially if they arent directly living in and with their Indigenous people. Chelsee found a market that is new and unique. She found a need and a personal connection which gave her a passion to drive her business. “At the end of the day, I am trying to make a corporation, and I’m also trying to show society that you can Indigenize the corporate world.”

Vurse currently counts 35 people as team members and Sakib aims to grow it into having a 5,000 – strong team in Dubai over the next five years. His Dubai-focused plans have been boosted also by the announcement of the Dubai Metaverse Strategy, which is designed to ensure that the contribution of the metaverse sector to the Emirate’s economy increases to US$4 billion by 2030. “Because Dubai is already known for its beautiful infrastructure, I think it’s time for it to be known for its digital vision and cutting edge deep-tech sector too,” Sakib says.

The Emirate’s history seems to have also inspired Sakib’s philosophy for his business, in that he is eager to give it strong foundations that are expected to both empower and uphold its digital development in the future. This is especially evident through Sakib’s choice to simultaneously work on the three verticals of Vurse, which include an interactive short video platform, a blockchain-based ecosystem for content creators, and a Vurse metaverse. Starting with the Vurse short video platform, Sakib says that its key differentiator lies in the fact that it is not focused on user consumption, but user interaction. “One of our key drivers is to enable young people to make smarter choices in the way they interact with and consume content,” he says. “What I see today is that peoples consumption of social media is not correlated with the quality of the content or the value they can drive out of their time on it. With Vurse, we’re also trying to enhance the creators’ experience by supporting them in producing content that is intellectually stimulating, entertaining, and driving economic value. Once that happens, consumption will happen organically.”

Mass blockchain adoption might follow the opposite trajectory, Sakib added, in that it will happen sooner than we expect. “Blockchain is an emerging technology, and people are getting more serious about it, because those younger generations are very tech and business savvy,” he says. “If you ask them about tokens or coins, they will give you all sorts of ideas, so I can say that adoption is happening at a very rapid pace and will accelerate even more.” The missing part, according to Sakib, is creating blockchain technology solutions “that can be used even by a five-year-old, and that can be explained in like two sentences, literally.”