Stranded in the strong Caribbean current, Melanie Perkins the soon be to tech mogul had been treading water for hours, her scarred and hurt leg aching. Perkin is not a surfer, nor is she American. This entire scenario was simply a result of an excentric and brave strategy for raising venture capital to fund her new tech startup Canva. Living in Australia, Perkins has little access to large tech startup investors or idea incubators. Her only option, after being turned down from over 100 investors, was to try her hand at receiving funding from a Kitesurfing venture capitalist on vacation in Perth Australia.

Perkins had concocted the idea in her senior year of college, where she realized that designing flyers, business cards, or frankly any “seemingly” easy piece of promotion was overly cumbersome. Needing to piece clunky parts together on Microsoft word, or take a whole class on how to use Adobe, and then convert the thing to a pdf and take it to a print store, to Perkins, was far too complicated a process for the digital age. She immediately began the process of designing a software that she best described as your paper, cards, flyers, or posters as pizza dough, and the graphics, writing, and colors as toppings that are simply added on top of the dough. Her goal was to design an easy to use editing software that required no dedication of time or skill and was also free to use.

She began her entrepreneurial process by creating the software and pitching it to schools as an easy way to make school yearbooks. Putting her education on pause, she got to work printing hundreds of papers for yearbooks that were being shipped across the globe to school in the US and even in France. Quickly she realized that she was going to need venture capital. Unfortunately, growing up in Perth Australia, the investor scene was dismal. However, eventually it came to her attention that a prominent American tech startup investor named Tai was coming to Perth to judge a startup competition and also take the opportunity to enjoy the premium Perth Kitesurfing opportunities. Perkins and her boyfriend  Cliff Obrecht (her new business partner) bombarded a party that Tai was hosting by pitching their software to the high profile guests at the party. Perkins and Obrecht left without any money, but they now had a new strategy: learn how to Kitesurf.

The strategy worked and they become regular attendees of Tai’s Kitesurfing events, which allowed both Perkins and Obrecht to fraternize with high level investors and tech executives including a good friend of famous PayPal mafia member, Peter Thiel. Eventually they met Cameron Adams, an exgoogler who believed in Perkins idea. Adams bought into the company. With him on board, the company that was now called Canva raised over $3 million in seed funding. This was the beginning of a revolution in graphic design, where designing any sort of material from promotion material, to online graphics, logos, and even clothing is as easy as dragging and dropping toppings on a pizza.

Today, Obrecht and Perkins are married and are collectively worth $800 million . Their tech giant is a thriving business valued at $3.4 billion, and is now advancing into the corporate space. Unfortunately, since Canva is advertised as a free software, it is very hard to incentivize users to pay extra for a few small upgrades. This aspect stifles the companies profits and growth and Canva has been forced to compete in the currently Adobe monopolized market of professional design. Where this path will lead the company is hard to say. However, what can be said is that Perkins is a true millennial entrepreneur. Her drive and hunger for success drove her to compete in a sport she had no love for, risking her life for a little bit of seed money because she believed so strongly in her idea is a true inspiration and insight for all of us. For the full story, visit Forbes 30 under 30 bio on Melanie Perkins.

Online shopping for many people has been a blessing. The ability to peruse thousands of virtual shelves, buy seemingly anything you can imagine, and have it delivered right to your door has become the standard form of shopping for many people. With this style of shopping however comes a very unfortunate caveat: the possibility of overspending. We all know the feeling of adding things to our cart, pressing that big yellow “buy now” button, and then checking our empty bank account. Before online shopping, this problem could be solved by finding coupons in magazines, newspapers, and grocery store bulletins. Now days these coupons come in the form of hard to find, unintuitive, online codes. Ryan Hudson, a recent MIT graduate with an MBA in business noticed this problem and decided to solve it.

For Ryan, it was not a lightbulb moment, or a sudden “eureka!” that gave him this idea. At the time Ryan, who had a history in computer programming, was fascinated by the browser extension feature that many search engines like Goggle were adding. He believed it opened up a whole new market for interesting, innovative programs. He was especially interested by how easy they were to create, program, and implement. It did not take a genius to make something like this, and yet it is incredibly accessible to people. He was looking for an excuse to develop a browser extension and noticed how often he found himself looking for online coupon codes. The idea of Honey was born. It took him 6 weeks to develop the program, and in October of 2012 he launched it.

It wasn’t as if there was not already competition in this field. There were already many online coupon code finders such as Rakuten. What Ryan noticed was that these companies were all focused on application based technology. Apps were the rage, and all the major companies were focused on developing tech for that space because it was the “new thing.” Who would develop a browser program? That was old news. Everyone was doing things on their phones. This was not the way that Ryan saw it. He noticed that he mostly shopped on his computer  so many other people must do the same thing. He disregarded the trend, paid no attention to his competitors, and did his own thing. Today Honey is the most widely used online coupon finding program in the world.

Ryan’s story is a classic entrepreneurial adventure. He did not plan to work in computer programing. He had interest in it, but his MBA was business, and out of college he was working in venture capitol. Ryan’s story should be inspiration for those who do not know their current path. He eventually sold the program to PayPal for $3 Billion, and has started working on other future business ventures of his own. Ryan is a multi-billionaire, not because he cheated, abused, bullied, or had family ties. Ryan pursued a hunch, created something no one else could compete with, and reimagined online shopping forever.

A recent class I took for my Entrepreneurship degree had me design and launch a t-shirt company. During this class, I could not stop thinking, that there is no way this will work. The t-shirt market is way too saturated to ever succeed? I knew it was just an assignment, but it still bothered me that it was a company I could never scale…or so I thought until I discovered the story of Bryson Oppermann, founder and sole operator of Got Funny t-shirts.

Bryson was a full time marketing director with a passion for art and design. One day he was showing some of his friends his art, when someone made a slight comment about how they would wear that design on a shirt. Bryson got the idea to start a little side hustle. Like me, he did not believe that this is something anyone could do full time. He started posting some funny videos about his shirts on tiktok and after a few days of this, one of his videos blew up. As a consequence his sales exploded, and within days he had sold hundreds of t-shirts.

There was nothing special about his t-shirts. They were cool, funny designs not unlike something one could find on etsy. What sold the t-shirts, Bryson would later reflect, was his style of promotion. People liked his personality. Consistent posting of videos took time, so he eventually quit his job, and took on the job of selling t-shirts full time. Today, Bryson pulls in over $1 million annually, all as a one person crew.

Bryson is a true testament of hard work, creativity, and passion. There is nothing special about Bryson or his company. He runs a basic Shopify store, and prints all of his t-shirts through Printful, and yet he is a successful entrepreneur, making a six figure income. Through creative marketing, and hard work, Bryson turned a basic t-shirt design, into a top 1% income. To check out his store, visit gotfunnymerch.com, and to check out his full interview, visit the UpFlip YouTube channel. 

*BE ADVISED: shirts may contain explicit langauge