Marc Nager is considered to be one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our generation. He created Start up weekend which brings together a network of global leaders, entrepreneurs, marketers, and business men and women to connect, share ideas, and launch businesses. The website promises that you can get connected and start a launch up in only 54 hours. This idea really ties in to what we have been discussing in class with liquid networks. Marc agrees with Pink and Johnson that multiple brains and ideas are much better than one.

Marc has recently turned his organization into a non-profit global organization. He is a great inspiration to us all and we can be inspired simply by using his website. I think as entrepreneurs we tend to think only about creating products or life changing endeavors, but Marc is a entrepreneur that is helping to aid a upcoming generation of entrepreneurs. He can teach us all about the true power of working together.

Have you ever stopped and considered how truly blessed we are to be able to attend college? For all we complain about exams and papers, the reality is there are people around the world who are not blessed with the same opportunities that we are. Tammy Tibbetts wanted to challenge that when she started her nonprofit organization She’s the First. She’s the First is an organization that sponsors girls in low income countries to be able to go to school. You can either donate as a one-time thing or pick a girls story and support her throughout her educational career.

Education can be a powerful tool to women in third world countries where prostitution is many people’s only option. This program can give the girls a bright future as being the first girl from her family to graduate from secondary school. This program helps out in 10 countries worldwide and has so far supported 382 girls with education.

I think that Tammy is a great example of a social entrepreneur. Her drive to help others can encourage us that as entrepreneurs we are able to make big impacts. We should not shy away from taking risks when the reward can be something like 896 years of education. 

Fraser Doherty took a once typical household product like jam and turned it into something exciting and innovative. Doherty was taught how to make jam at a young age by his grandmother and his passion quickly flourished into selling jam around his neighborhood. Soon he was dropping out of school to sell the jam full time. He took his jam and pitched his idea to Waitrose who accepted and put his jam on the market to 300 UK grocery stores.

It is now one of the most popular jam products in the UK. This is such a good twist on jam that combines good marketing tools as well as innovation. The packaging for the jam is fresh and new, unlike what typical jam looks like in our grocery stores. Doherty is a great inspiration to all entrepreneurs because he chose something that had been marketed before and putting his own twist on it. He completely rejuvenated the way people view jam. As entrepreneurs, some of our job is to market to our audience in a positive way that will want them to buy it. It is part of our job to be excited about the products and make the consumers excited. Fraser reminds all of us that part of the job is making it a personal experience for the customers.

Don’t you hate when you forget your password to something? Or when someone logs you out of your Facebook and you can’t remember the password you created for it in ninth grade? Don’t sweat for another minute because mysocialcloud is here. Stacey Ferrreria created this website at the age of 21. All you have to do is log in, make an account, and never worry about forgetting a password again.

Once you register for this site all you have to do is click at the top of your screen on any website that requires a password and hit log me in. This is a cloud based product. Mysocialcloud also can protect you against hackers as well. You will receive a notification anytime someone tries to use your password or log in as you. People like to describe mysocialcloud as insurance for your passwords.

I think that this is an innovative idea because it is clearly a very real problem that has not been addressed before. This is something that most people get frustrated about, but have never really stopped to figure out a way to solve it. I also love that this can protect you from hackers as well, because this is becoming a much more prevalent issue with the expansion of the internet. It can encourage all of us as entrepreneurs in regards to how we come up with ideas. Realizing that most things are problems to someone can help people to frame problems in new ways and come up with new ideas. Overall, I think that this is an idea that will take off, and all they did was address an annoyance in a way people hadn’t thought of before.

Sebastian Lindstrom started his business idea on a dream. That dream involved finding the unsung heroes of the world and telling their stories in a very real way. He started the nonprofit company What Took You So Long? This company travels to small countries all over the world from Papa New Guinea to Mongolia and everywhere in between to film and take pictures of people making a difference in the smallest parts of the world. With these pictures and films they present workshops, engage people on social media, and give lectures to raise awareness and tell their amazing stories. From these pictures, they also make ads for companies who are doing good things either in these remote areas or across the globe in known cities.

I think that Sebastian is an inspiration for all of us by helping those around the world in an interesting and unique way. He is innovative in the style of film he chooses to use ( guerilla filmmaking) ,and by the way he presents the information he gathers. I think one of the main problems all entrepreneurs struggle with is not thinking big enough with their ideas. They play it safe and don’t think about how much their idea or product can make an impact worldwide. As entrepreneurs we must constantly be looking at our passions and the things that inspire us as full for our products and ventures. Sebastian is a testament to us all that with perseverance the passions we have can become the jobs we have in the future.

Young entrepreneur Jessica Scorpio started by wondering how she could solve the problem of 250 million cars in the United States sitting idle 22 hours every day. Her solution was Getaround. This is a car service that connects people across the country who need cars with people who want to rent their cars. Getaround provides insurance to all its customers, so renters will not have to worry about their cars getting damaged. I think this is a great solution for families that only have one car, college students, and even people who just want to drive a nice car for a date.

What’s unique about Jessica is that her solution creates so many benefits. It can benefit having less access waste, it can benefit people who simply need some extra cash, and it can benefit people who have to share cars with family members or don’t have one. It is innovative because it takes an issue people have struggled with for decades and provides a practical solution. Customers were wary at first of having strangers use their cars, but her website does a great job of explaining all the information in a way that can make them feel safe and comforted. Providing insurance for all those who participate was a stroke of genius on their part. This was exactly the sort of thing that was missing from the valet service some students presented in class.

Things we can take away from Jessica would be that sometimes problems that have impossible solutions, like letting a stranger use your car, can become a reality. She is a great inspiration to all entrepreneurs to not give up until you are successful. It took a lot of tries to get Getaround up and running, but now it is a very successful company. She has helped me to think about maybe going back to problems I thought were previously impossible to solve and trying to approach them in another way. She is a master at pivoting her problem until she reaches the prime solution. In conclusion, there is much we as entrepreneurs can learn from Jessica. Her innovation and determination can give us the confidence we need to begin our own projects.