William Zhou is the mind behind the revolutionary software that is transforming how teachers create their classroom experience. Zhou’s goal is to streamline and help those who are pouring into future generations. In his own words, “I had always thought that teaching is an easy job. I thought teachers taught from a textbook and got 3 months off in a year. It wasn’t until I visited my own high school teachers that I realized it’s not the case. They were struggling with an overwhelming amount of work” (Forbes.com). Chalk.com assists teachers with the day to day tasks, freeing them up to focus more on their interactions with students. Zhou’s focus is to improve the classroom experience both for the teacher and the student.
Author Archive for slatterymc1
Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are both in their late twenties. They’re also billionaires. Also the youngest billionaires in the world. How? Well you probably helped them get there. They together created Snapchat, which was based off of a friend’s idea. Theirs is a story of a slow start and continued belief in their idea. The summer that they started Snapchat in earnest, they had 127 total users after two months. Compare that now to their 100 million daily users. Facebook tempted a $3 billion buy out, which they refused. Snapchat is now estimated to be worth more than $16 billion. They have clearly found a way to take a fun social app and use it to make an incredible amount of money.
Peter Cashmore is 24 years of age and worth around $70 million. How? He started the website Mashable. By visiting the site even just one time, you can understand his success. Mashable is a website full of articles that are seemingly thrown together, in a clean and simplistic way. Article titles grab your attention and range over a wide variety of subjects. While not worthy of citation for an essay, the website feels far cleaner than BuzzFeed or ClickHole for example. Peter’s site now has more than 10 million monthly visitors, and that number is growing. This is definitely a unique website and one I will be using going forward. Peter has also been mentioned in several exclusive lists such as Forbe’s 30 Under 30 and a few others.
Alexandra Cristin White, 28 years of age, started Roomify. Roomify is your one stop shop for dorm living. Their goal is to stay affordable, while eliminating all of the stress that comes with the unknown of college life. They want you to move in having a shower caddie, fitted sheets, and to look like you know whats up while doing it. College is already stressful, they want to take the stress away. I think its a brilliant idea. There are some companies like this, but now with their flare and style. Not to mention low price. I love seeing people looking to make a business and profit, but also a valuable service. They really market towards their audience well. Great and innovative new startup.
Jon West and Chad Ledford started Addshoppers through a long series of pivots that started with: them selling socks door to door. Insane. They now have more than 10,000 clients using their add platform. Their goal is to recover customers that these businesses have lost. Their pitch for why to use them is really interesting. They outline that when buying, the decision process is determined by a recommendation from a human, and a recommendation from a machine. Their platform provides both of these to help recover customers who have since moved on. 
Brian Chesky is the Co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, which is a service which allows home owners to rent their homes out to visitors much like a hotel. He began the endeavor with the companies current CPO, Joe Gebbia who Chesky met at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). This service is on the cutting edge of making travel easy and more comfortable. Chesky has been and continues to be the main source of vision for the company. His vision started with developing a sharing economy. One that uses the principle that if you’re not using something, someone else might be able to. When people are on vacation or if they have a spare bedroom, they can make money by allowing others more affordable and more comfortable staying options other than hotels. He continues to be the main source of this vision as they are now a $2.1 billion company that serves 50,000-60,000 customers every day.