Author Archive for ThompsonNS20

Andrew Mason – Founder of Groupon

Posted by ThompsonNS20 
· Sunday, November 29th, 2020 
· 2 Comments

Background:

Andrew was born on October 22, 1980 in Pittsburgh, PA. From a young age of 15, Mason had an entrepreneurial spirit as he started a weekend bagel-delivery service called Bagel Express.

Phantom Interview with Former Groupon CEO Andrew Mason

Later on in his life in 2003, Mason graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor’s degree in music. Finding no work in that field, he took a job as a software developer at InnerWorkings, Inc., and met the company’s founder, Eric Lefkofsky.

Then in 2006, Mason earned a scholarship to attend the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy after creating Policy Tree, a visualization tool for policy debates.

The Beginning of Groupon:

Also in 2006, Mason created The Point which was an Internet-based program designed to organize grassroots action for a given cause.

In 2007 Mason searched for a way to make a profit from The Point by exploring the concept of collective buying. In 2008 he founded and opened Groupon with Lefkofsky and Mason became the company’s chief executive officer.

By negotiating deep discounts on vendors’ products and services, Groupon tried to link vendors with new customers through its signature “deal of the day” for a spotlighted product or service. Groupon profited from each sale by receiving up to 50 percent of the retail value of the product or service.

By 2012 Groupon had grown from a few dozen workers to over 12,000, and it was operating in more than 150 U.S. cities and more than 40 countries.

Groupon’s Success and Downfall:

In June 2011 Mason announced his plan to take the company public. In November the initial public offering allowed Groupon to raise $700 million, which raised Mason’s net worth to $1 billion and increased Groupon’s value to $12.7 billion. By August 2012, however, Groupon’s stock had plummeted 75 percent, and in February 2013 Mason was “forced” out of the CEO position.Groupon $25 (Email Delivery) : Target

Even though the company eventually failed, Mason still had a big success in this company and made a lot of money in the process. Before Groupon’s downfall, Google offered to buy the company for $6 billion, but Mason wanted the company to go public and he wanted to hold onto his creation. He wasn’t affraid of failure which is key to entrepreneurship.

2 Comments
Categories : App, Shopping

The Story of Shopify – Tobi Lutke

Posted by ThompsonNS20 
· Thursday, November 12th, 2020 
· No Comments

Background:

Tobi was born in 1981 in Germany. At a very young age, he found a love for technology. Just at the age of 11, he began rewriting the code of the games he played and modifying computer hardware as a hobby.Tobias Lütke - Wikipedia

Just after tenth grade, Lutke dropped out of school and entered an apprenticeship program at the Koblenzer Carl-Benz-School to become a computer programmer.

The Birth of Shopify:

A few years after moving to Canada in 2004, Tobi and his partners, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake, launched Snowdevil, which was an online snowboard shop. Lutke built a new online business platform for the site, using Ruby on Rails. Then soon after, the Snowdevil founders shifted their focus from snowboards to e-commerce and launched Shopify in 2006.

Shopify is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company. It is an e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems.

Shopify Now:

The Globe and Mail named Lutke “CEO of the Year” in November 2014 and his company has been growing ever since.Sell Successfully on Shopify – Vdezi

Now, Shopify is worth over $1.8 billion and is very philanthropic. In 2019, Lutke donated over a million seedlings to Team Trees because as much as he loves technology, he also loves the environment.

Entrepreneurial Lessons:

It always amazes me when I hear stories of people dropping out of school to start businesses. I don’t think my parents would appreciate that too much and it sounds scary leaving your comfortable life to journey into the unknown at such a young age.

This is why Tobi Lutke was such a great entrepreneur, he wasn’t afraid of failure or the business world.

 

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Categories : App, eCommerce

CEO of Stripe – Patrick Collison

Posted by ThompsonNS20 
· Sunday, November 1st, 2020 
· No Comments

Background:

Patrick Collison was born September 9, 1988 in Ireland. He was the eldest of three boys and took his first computer course when he was eight years old at the University of Limerick and began learning computer programming at the age of ten.

Ever since he was young, he was interested in science and technology. In 2005 at the age of 16, Collison was the recipient of the 41st Young Scientist of the Year for his work with Lisp. His brother and co-founder, John Collison, scored the highest-ever score received by a student for the Irish Leaving Certificate. Before Patrick’s last year of High School he left early to attend MIT.

During his first quarter of freshman year, Patrick founded Auctomatic and joined Y Combinator. Its path would not last long, however, because ten months after incorporating, the company was bought by Live Current Media for $5 million where Patrick became the Director of Product Engineering in 2008.

The Beginning of Stripe:

In early 2010, John and Patrick began working on Stripe together. Stripe came into existence when Patrick was working on several side projects and saw that it was difficult to accept payments on the web. They sought to solve the problem and see if it was possible to make online payments very simple and easy to use. For the next 6-months they played with it, showed it to friends, saw how people interacted with it, and made changes along the way.

Within 2-weeks of building the prototype they had their first transactions with a company called 280 North. Eventually its founder, Ross Boucher, would join Stripe as one of the first employees.

Some Trouble:

In the beginning they weren’t sure how big the market was or if they could provide the user experience that they wanted. They also didn’t have the answers to whether or not they could fully address issues like fraud, foreign payments, or credibility. They needed an investor to help give them the credibility they needed by investing in their company.Pricing & fees | Stripe

So that’s what happened. Their first funding came from Paul Graham who worked with Y Combinator that set them down a path of success.

Stripe’s Success:

After solving the technical issues with an online payment service, Stripe took off. Today they are receiving about $380.1 million a year and the company is valued at $36 billion.

I find it interesting that this company became so successful in the environment of a lot of competition. There were a lot of other online payment options before Stripe (like PayPal) but the Collison brothers found a way to make theirs easier to use and more appealing to the market.

This goes to show that if you are invested in your idea and willing to endure through the hardships, you will be successful.

 

 

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Categories : App, Online Companies, Uncategorized

How Tumblr Came to be – David Karp

Posted by ThompsonNS20 
· Thursday, October 8th, 2020 
· 1 Comment

Karp’s Upbringing:

Karp was born on July 6, 1986 in New York, NY. At a young age, he found a love for technology and by eighth grade he was already designing websites for local companies.

This made him drop out from school, resorting to home-schooling just so that he could

save time. He did plan on going to one of the league universities later in his life but some great opportunities came his way and changed his plans completely.

At the age of 14, Karp started interning at various software companies. A few years later, he was made the head of ‘UrbanBaby’, a parenting forum that he developed a software for. A few months after that, he took off for Tokyo to get better at his business and computer skills (which he did). Within a few years, he formed an independent consulting firm called Davidville.

Birth of Tumblr:

Karp was looking to hire some employees for Davidville so Marco Arment joined the team as an engineer after replying to Karp’s craigslist ad.

Karp had been interested in microblogging for some time and was waiting for one of the established blogging platforms to introduce their own microblogging platform. After a year of waiting, Karp and Arment began working on their own microblogging platform during a two-week gap between contracts in 2006. Tumblr was launched in February 2007 and within two weeks, the service had gained 75,000 users.

In October 2007, Karp shut down his consultancy business because his work with Tumblr was interfering with his client work. Davidville was renamed Tumblr, Inc. and 25 percent of the company was sold to a small group of investors.

 

On May 20, 2013, it was announced that Yahoo! and Tumblr had reached an agreement for Yahoo! to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. As of November 1, 2017, Tumblr hosts over 375.4 million blogs. Karp announced in November 2017 that he would be retiring from Tumblr by the end of the year.

And that’s how the young genius, David Karp became one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the world with a net worth of $200 million (as of 2017).

The Entrepreneurial Side of Karp:

David doesn’t like to talk about his age as he isn’t entirely secure about people knowing how young he is. He doesn’t want the story of Tumblr to be “all about his youth.” He wants the story of Tumblr to be about the remarkable genius of a young boy who dared to believe and achieve.

That statement right there, “believe and achieve” is what being an entrepreneur is about. Any one can come up with an idea, but it’s the ones who believe in it and act on it that are real entrepreneurs.

 

1 Comment
Categories : Blog, Social Media

Daniel Ek: Co-Founder of Spotify

Posted by ThompsonNS20 
· Saturday, September 26th, 2020 
· 3 Comments

Background:

Daniel was born February 21, 1983 in Stockholm, Sweden. Ek grew up in Ragsved, near Stockholm, and when he was a teenager he created websites for businesses. He did all of this out of his own bedroom.

Ek had an entrepreneurial mind ever since he was a teenager. Innovation and learning is what drove him to become what he is today. 

He dropped out of college and worked for several Web-based companies before founding Advertigo, an online marketing firm that he sold in 2006 to the Swedish company Tradedoubler. After his small business that he ran out of his room, he decided to move onto bigger and better things thus cofounding Spotify.

Creation of Spotify:

Daniel Ek cofounded Spotify, which is an Internet music-streaming service that provides listeners with legal access to millions of songs, with Tradedoubler’s cofounder Martin Lorentzon.

Spotify’s business model for providing access to music online differed from other services in that it did not involve charging for single song downloads. Users could listen to songs for free if they were willing to have an ad played here and there. If customers wanted to get rid of the ads, they could pay a monthly subscription.

The music industry didn’t show too much enthusiasm about this product because Spotify’s license to stream music earned the industry less revenue per song than it got from a music download service like iTunes.

Ek responded to these claims by saying that Spotify discouraged online music piracy by providing a low cost alternative and the company would gain money over time.

Launch of Spotify:

Even though the music industry wasn’t really on board, Spotify launched in 2008 and quickly became popular with both users and investors. By 2010 Spotify started earning some real money and in 2012 Spotify had 18 million songs and more than 20 million monthly users (not all were subscriptions).

Five years later, however, the site had more than 35 million songs and had almost 160 million monthly users, more than 70 million of them were subscribers. Spotify had a market value of about $27 billion in the first 9 years of opening.

Today, the company’s market value is around $21 billion and Spotify has made $2 billion in revenue.

 

 

 

 

3 Comments
Categories : Uncategorized

The Story of Joshua Dziabiak: Founder of Media Catch

Posted by ThompsonNS20 
· Wednesday, September 9th, 2020 
· No Comments

A little history to his story:

Dziabiak was born in Freedom, Pennsylvania, in 1987. He lived on a 20-acre farm from where his parents ran their own septic-cleaning business.

Dziabiak was first introduced to technology when his family bought a computer when he was 12 years old. After this, he begged them to get Internet after one of his friends asked him if he had a website.

He left school during his freshman year of high school to further invest in his business, turning to home schooling where he taught himself using CD ROMs.

Media Catch Career:

Dziabiak began his entrepreneurial career at the age of 14. He used a dial-up connection to surf the Internet and designed his own personal website. When he was this young, most companies didn’t have Internet and didn’t know how to make a website to promote their business. He took advantage of this situation and started charging companies a couple hundred dollars for him to make a website for their organization.

This idea exploded by the time he turned 16 and made enough money that he could hire 14 full-time employees. He named the company Media Catch and got his name out into the business world.

This company was such a hit that he sold it for a million dollars, making him a millionaire before the age of 18.

He used the money from Media Catch to start some other companies, but the focus of this post is on Media Catch.

What makes Joshua Dziabiak different?:

Dziabiak is unique in the fact that he took advantage of the start of the Internet and created a company that was in high demand.

Dziabiak’s was interested in technology every since he was a kid and used this interest to drive him to create a million dollar company.

He took an idea that he had and acted on it, unlike most people who try to start their own company. Most people are afraid of failure which blocks them from some of their most creative ideas.

Dziabiak’s impact on me:

His story showed me that age is just a number when it comes to entrepreneurship. I, like many other people, have always thought of entrepreneurs as people who are older and more educated on business principles.

Dziabiak shows that a good idea can take you to many places if you are willing to put in the work and believe in your idea.

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Categories : Millennial Enrepreneuers, Uncategorized, Websites