Author Archive for smithcb22

Andrew Mason: Groupon

Posted by smithcb22 
· Wednesday, November 30th, 2022 
· 1 Comment

Andrew Mason launched Groupon in November of 2008.  Groupon is a global e-commerce marketplace that connects subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, travel, goods, and services.  Mason’s idea to create Groupon came from his belief that there has to be some way to leverage a large number of people’s collective bargaining power to accomplish a goal.  Mason created what would later become Groupon with a $1 million dollar loan he got from his boss Eric Lefkofsky after Mason shared his business idea with him.  It didn’t take long for Groupon to gain popularity and become, with it only taking a year for Groupon to go from a dozen staff members to over 300 hundred.  Also, it only took 16 months for Groupon to become the fastest company in history to reach a company value of 1 billion.  Sadly, it seems like the company made some mistakes and had to pay out around 940 million to shareholders and investors, losing the company around 86% of its total value.  This payout combined with Mason’s way of managing the company caused him to be dismissed as company CEO in 2013.

Even though he was fired from his own business over its sudden financial collapse, I still think Andrew Mason is an exemplary entrepreneur because he decided to continue to found more companies instead of giving up.

1 Comment
Categories : Business, Business::Entrepreneurs, Business::Sales

Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom: Instagram

Posted by smithcb22 
· Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022 
· No Comments

Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom created Instagram in October of 2010.  Krieger and Systrom created the app after being inspired by their shared love of technology and photography.  Their app was an immediate success gaining millions of users in a few short years.  One of the main reasons that they decided to create Instagram in the first place instead of using one of the myriads of other image sharing websites such as Facebook and Twitter, is because they felt that these other websites did not allow people to share images meaningfully, so they decided to create their own alternative.  Another reason why Instagram got so popular was because they managed to release their app right when social media was becoming popular and when more people started getting access to faster broadband internet.  As time has gone on the app has continued to add features that not only keep the current users of Instagram happy, but also bring in new users to the app everyday

What I think makes Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom exemplary entrepreneurs is the fact that they found a common passion in an underserved market, so they created their own app to fill the void.

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Categories : App

Adam D’Angelo: Quora

Posted by smithcb22 
· Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022 
· No Comments

Adam D’Angelo helped to co-found Quora with Charlie Cheever in June of 2009.  Quora is a social question and answer website that D’Angelo and Cheever built using all the best aspects from similar apps and websites of the time.  Not long after the launch of the website, Charlie Cheever stepped down from his position and D’Angelo took full control of the website.  He soon started to implement blogging, statistical functions, and other quality of life updates to the website that made them stand out from the other question and answer websites of the time.  People seemed to really like the statistical functions that were added to the website because it allowed them to easily see how many people had seen their posts.  Also, for a while the website did not have any advertisements because D’Angelo did not think they were relevant to the user experience.

In recent years the website has gone downhill with data breaches that have caused people to have their information stolen, and the removal of quality-of-life functions that users of the website seemed to really enjoy such as anonymous posting.  Even with all these issues that Quora seems to currently have, I think D’Angelo is a good example of an entrepreneur because he took the knowledge and money, he got from working for Facebook and used it to build his own successful social media website.

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Categories : Entrepreneurship

Adam Lyons: The Zebra

Posted by smithcb22 
· Monday, October 3rd, 2022 
· 1 Comment

Adam Lyons helped co-found The Zebra along with Joshua Dziabiak in 2012.  The Zebra is an insurance comparison site that compares rates from over 200 different insurance carriers. He helped co-found this multi-billion dollar company while living in his friends basement collecting unemployment in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.  After making a fortune while being the CEO of The Zebra, he left the company in 2018 to pursue a career in reality TV development.  What I think is exemplary about this entrepreneur is that he went from rock bottom, dropping out of high school and living off of unemployment checks in a friends basement to a founder of a successful business and a billionaire in around 6 years time.

1 Comment
Categories : Business, Convenience

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia-Airbnb

Posted by smithcb22 
· Sunday, September 25th, 2022 
· 3 Comments

Brian Chesky and a Joe Gebbia founded Airbnb in 2008.  They got the idea when there was a conference in town that completely booked all the nearby hotels.  They decided to take advantage of the circumstances and rent out air mattresses and space in their apartment to those who couldn’t find a hotel to make enough money to pay rent, this is where they got the name Air bed and Breakfast.  After their success, they decided to create a website that offered their apartment as an alternative to those that couldn’t book a hotel during the large conferences that were held in San Francisco.  After launching their website, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia traveled around the US to meet with users and promote their business to potential investors, it didn’t take long for them to see success.  Just one year later they had around 3,000 listings and only a few years after that, they also started to offer their services in foreign countries.  Now in 2022 Airbnb is a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of listing across the world.

These two entrepreneurs innovated the house rental industry by appealing to renters and being on average a cheaper option than hotels,  Airbnb is also starting to beat hotels in the hospitality sector as well. Back in 2008 they even made $30,000 selling presidential candidate themed cereal at conventions during the elections.

 

3 Comments
Categories : Business, Business::Entrepreneurs, Business::Home Based Business, Convenience

Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp-Pinterest

Posted by smithcb22 
· Saturday, September 24th, 2022 
· No Comments

Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp created Pinterest as a way for people to share their ideas, interests, and inspirations with other people around the world.  Pinterest was launched in 2010 as an upgrade to their previous app Tote, which was an online store for buying virtual catalogs.  After experiencing problems with Tote, they decided to create a new app that instead of being focused primarily as an e-commerce store, focused more on the social media aspects such as the sharing of ideas and projects that the users of Tote were enjoying the most.  As time went on they added quality of life updates such as business accounts and ads that are targeted to peoples interests and searches in the app.

Although Pinterest started out with a very small amount of users in 2010, by 2011 the app was receiving around 11 million visits per week and in 2020 had around 400 million active monthly users.  Also, as of 2021 Pinterest reported that they made around $1.7 billion in ad revenue which was a 48% increase from the previous year.

Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp demonstrate their entrepreneurial skills by taking the feed back and lessons learned from their previous project and use it to create something bigger and better.

 

No Comments
Categories : App, Communication