Author Archive for rogersnw18

Teal Drones

Posted by rogersnw18 
· Tuesday, December 4th, 2018 
· 1 Comment

Middle school can be a tough time for many young teens. It’s a time to begin learning who you are and trying new things. In George Matus’ case, it was a time to work as a test pilot, learn about aviation, and prototype helicopters and drones. George’s goal was to find what was lacking in drones and add and improve upon them. A few years later George’s dream drone was born in the form of The Teal One.

Matus officially started his drone business when was 17 years old in high school. It was quite the journey. He raised 2.8 million in seed money with 100k coming from Peter Thiel’s Foundation to skip college. Matus also participated in Battlebots, built a team of 15 workers, built a website, created a warranty policy, and completed high school classes the same year. Finally, he launched his commercial drone business, Teal Drones, in early 2017 with his first product costing $1,299.

Perhaps the most incredible part of Matus’ journey was his job opportunity as a test pilot for HorizonHobby in middle school. After being told to take down a video on YouTube of flying a modified version of their drone upside down, he was offered a job. While there, Matus designed a helicopter that could fly for 2 hours and a drone that could fly over a hundred miles per hour. His experience in this job allowed him to see the gaps in the drone industry by just age 16. With determination, natural skill, and a passion for drones, George Matus created a company that is leading the way in the drone industry through design innovation and the search for new use applications.

1 Comment
Categories : Aviation, Business, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Technology

Kool Kidz Sno Konez

Posted by rogersnw18 
· Friday, November 16th, 2018 
· 2 Comments

Brother and sister team, Jaden and Amaya, began a food truck business in the city of Memphis at age 12 and 11 in 2017. The duo began with a card table and extension cord for their blender in the front yard and enlisted some of their friends to help advertise on the street corners. The snow cones became a quick success, earning the pre-teens $1000 in just two summers. With the help of their mom, they bought a van off Craigslist and brought it up to food truck standards for the city. This made them the city’s youngest food truck operators and one of a mere 30 “true” food trucks on the streets. Their mother, a single mom and registered nurse, drives the food truck on the weekends and Amaya works the window. Jaden has plans for expansion into the future with the goal of franchising their snow cone business. He sees this as a way to work smart and not unnecessarily hard.

Kool Kidz Sno Konez was made possible by an ordinance created in 2011 making it easier to enter business in Memphis. The family took full advantage of this and are now working towards a franchise. Jaden and Amaya represent the entrepreneurial spirit and mindset. After their mother encouraged them to make money on their own so they could afford toys and other things, they took it to the next level. They didn’t settle for a standard lemonade stand, but reached for higher standards and now find themselves on a continuing entrepreneurial journey at age 13 and 12.

2 Comments
Categories : Business, Food

Mixpanel

Posted by rogersnw18 
· Monday, November 5th, 2018 
· No Comments

Suhail Doshi has created a successful data provision company called Mixpanel. Initially Doshi saw his career reaching its peak at a $90,000 software engineer job for Intel. This quickly changed when he threw out the old Steve Job’s notion that companies know interface design better than the consumer. Mixpanel provides an assortment of consumer behavior analytics to BMW, OpenTable, and Intuit. Doshi started the company at the age of 20 in 2009 and quickly achieved $40 million in revenue. During his internship at Slide, he realized the usefulness of in-house analytics and was inspired to create his own company. Doshi observed other companies like Zynga working on analytics software and knew he had to act fast in order to keep up with competition like google analytics. The first few years were very challenging, but fortunately they were able to make it into the acclaimed startup accelerator, Y Combinator, and gain recognition. Gaining venture capital was also very difficult during the recession with only two of 13 venture capitalist willing to invest. Mixpanel has come a long way since then. Data products now guide design at silicon valley and the company employs 300 people with $77 million raised to date. Doshi says there is a constant need to evolve and that a 10 year old company is a whole different beast than a start-up. Teams must work together and be willing to adapt to new, creative solutions.

 

No Comments
Categories : Business, Software, Technology

Wonky Drinks

Posted by rogersnw18 
· Monday, October 15th, 2018 
· 2 Comments

Karina Sudenyte and Maciek Kackprzyk are two young Welsh entrepreneurs who decided to tackle the left-over food and plastic waste problem with one business, Wonky Drinks. The social enterprise was created by the two at ages 20 and 23 with a successful crowdfunding campaign. Within a year, the two were buying ugly, but edible fruit at 70% of market price and bottling the unique juice in recycled glass bottles. In doing so, Wonky Drinks has prevented 175 tons of fruit from going to a landfill. The business’ main source of revenue currently comes from B2B sales with partnerships including Bank of America, HSBC and Merrill Lynch, KPMG, and caterer BaxterStorey. Moving forward, the company’s goals include giving more drinks to charity, reducing 10,000 tons of produce waste, and breaking into supermarkets with different canned drinks.

Karina and Maciek have won a Young Entrepreneur of the Year trophy at the NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2017 for their work. During their childhood, Karina would help her mom sell household goods and Maciek would attempt to sell paper shoes to his neighbors. Maciek has now earned two masters degrees in law and Karina is focusing on earning a BA in Business Management. Their entrepreneurial spirit coupled with their academic achievements is a testament to the good that can be done when  natural creativity meshes with acquired knowledge. 

2 Comments
Categories : Agriculture, Food, Great Ideas

The Drip Drop

Posted by rogersnw18 
· Saturday, September 29th, 2018 
· 4 Comments

Ice cream is fantastic. There’s no questioning that. But what is the biggest problem facing ice cream consumers around the world? Melted ice cream! Ice cream melts so quickly on a hot summer day and millions of people struggle to deal with the mess. Children get absolutely covered in their ice cream and parents all over have to clean their kids’ hands, face, or maybe even feet. Two young high school entrepreneurs saw this problem, acted on it, and created “The Drip Drop.”

Sam Nassif and Oliver Greenwald joined forces in fifth grade to enter their idea into an invention competition. Their solution to dripping ice cream was simple: create an edible ring that slides up the ice cream cone and catches the running ice cream. The young entrepreneurs hit a major milestone in 2016 with Barbara Corcoran investing $50,000 into their company. After working on prototyping and manufacturing in 2017, they now set their sights on getting their product into stores with the help of a Kickstarter campaign.

Sam and Oliver began with empathy. They saw a mother using tons of napkins to clean her messy child and remembered the times they’ve dealt with melting ice cream. This was a simple problem with no solution. The two acquired a patent and are now on their way to helping people enjoy the greatest dessert of all time: ice cream.

4 Comments
Categories : Food

Bark’N’Borrow

Posted by rogersnw18 
· Monday, September 17th, 2018 
· 3 Comments

A unique business emerged in 2016 through the form of an app called Bark’N’Borrow. This app allows users who cannot take care of a dog full time to find people who need a temporary dog sitter and enjoy a short time with someone else’s pet. In addition, different dog owners can connect and trade dog sitting duties with each other. Many options such as dog breed, personality, and distance can be made available on the app for other users to see. The platform donates 5% of all subscriptions to Best Friends Animal Society. Liam Berkeley, 26, founded the company two years ago on National Dog Day and has mentioned how much animal rescues love the app because it brings awareness to their cause.

Berkeley has done a fantastic job of finding a need and filling the gap. Finding a dog sitter can be an arduous, time intensive process, but now someone can connect with lots of other users for $7.99 or $4.99 a month. Berkeley has also been diligent in making sure all users are properly checked and that the company has adequate insurance for any incidents.. This app demonstrates Liam’s commitment to dogs and dog-lovers. Bark’n’Borrow shows this passion with an excellent social entrepreneurship aspect.  They focused on a passion and Liam was observant enough to recognize a fantastic solution for a simple problem.

3 Comments
Categories : Business, Dogs, Uncategorized