Author Archive for zeislerzt1

Airbnb

Posted by zeislerzt1 
· Tuesday, December 1st, 2020 
· 10 Comments

10 years ago, the thought of letting a random stranger sleep in your house was an absurd idea.  However, That’s exactly what Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky did in 2007.  They were struggling to pay rent in San Francisco and decided to rent out three air mattresses in the loft of their apartment during a weeklong conference in the city that made hotel rooms very scarce and expensive.  They then decided to try to build it into a business.  They struggled to get funding for a long time, with many investors not seeing it as a feasible idea.  However, they eventually got funding from venture capitalist Paul Graham.  This allowed them to get the capital they needed to finally start growing the business.  They shortened the name from Air Bed & Breakfast to Airbnb and created a sleek new logo to improve the company’s image as it was starting to grow.  The founders of the business even stayed at every single Airbnb in New York City to build relationships with the hosts and build loyalty to the business.  Everything was looking up until the company started facing regulatory issues with cities that did not want their residents renting homes out as Airbnb’s.  This coincided with a few incidents where guests trashed the host’s home and led to distrust among the hosts.  Airbnb had to combat the regulatory issues by collecting hotel taxes and distributing them to cities, whole it built back up trust with its hosts by providing hosts with a $1 million coverage policy against damages.  These initiatives, along with acquisitions of other companies and additions to the services and options provided to customers have again allowed Airbnb to move forward and grow the business.  I like Airbnb’s story of an example of perseverance by the entrepreneurs.  They faced rejection and roadblocks every step of the way, but they always overcame them and never gave up on their vision.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-airbnb-was-founded-a-visual-history-2016-2#since-2016-airbnb-has-been-expanding-its-services-through-a-series-of-high-end-launches-and-acquisitions-adjacent-to-its-main-service-28

10 Comments
Categories : Uncategorized

Dirty Rotten Flowers: How Roman Sacke Started a Business by Selling the Waste from his Primary Enterprise

Posted by zeislerzt1 
· Tuesday, November 17th, 2020 
· 6 Comments

Roman Sacke always knew how to create a positive experience for someone by using flowers.  When he got in trouble as a child in the Czech Republic, he would walk around his neighborhood picking flowers to create an “apology bouquet” for his Mom so that she wouldn’t be as mad at him.  After moving to LA as a young man in 2004, he used this talent to build a successful high-end floral business.  However, it was not his primary business that brought him his notoriety.   He wondered if he could find a market for the rotting and dying flowers that he usually threw out as waste.  This idea came to life in the form of his spin-off business, Dirty Rotten Flowers, which allows customers to send dirty rotten flowers to someone as a joke.  This is a great example of using an entrepreneurial mind to take advantage of the adjacent possible.  I find it very impressive when people are able to take what would normally be waste and find a way to make money off of it.  This may not be cutting-edge innovation, but it is definitely one of the more creative business models I have ever seen.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222819#:~:text=Dirty%20Rotten%20Flowers%20co%2Dfounder,Rotten%20Flowers%20to%20find%20out.

6 Comments
Categories : Uncategorized

Potato Parcel – An Unlikely Success Story

Posted by zeislerzt1 
· Monday, November 2nd, 2020 
· 6 Comments

Potato Parcel is a business that was started by 24 year old Alex Craig, a mobile app developer that had recently graduated from the University of North Texas.  The business concept is fairly simple, you can have a potato, with 140 characters or less written on it, mailed anonymously to any address.  As it turns out, there was actually a decent market for this service.

After going viral on Reddit and Twitter, Potato Parcel quickly began making profits of $10,000 – $13,000 per month.  By the end of the year, the business was sold to Riad Bekhit for $40,000.  Bekhit expanded the product line to allow you to ship potatoes stamped with the image of someone’s face.  The business was even able to secure an investment on Shark Tank, further growing its market.  Potato Parcel has the value proposition of being an alternative to boring greeting cards.  The goes to show that if you know how to position yourself in the market, you can build a successful business out of nearly anything.

 

6 Comments
Categories : eCommerce, Great Ideas, Shark Tank

The Million Dollar Homepage: How Alex Tew Paid for College

Posted by zeislerzt1 
· Thursday, October 8th, 2020 
· 4 Comments

In 2005, 21 year old Alex Tew created the million dollar homepage to fund his college education.  The website had 1 million pixels and they would be sold for $1 in blocks of 100.  The buyer could use the pixels to put a slogan or message and a link to a website of their choice.  Sounds like a pretty dumb idea right? Well it actually turned out to be extremely successful.  Within a year all pixels had sold, and the last 1,000 actually sold on an eBay auction for $38,100, bringing the revenues of the site to $1,036,100.  It started with some of his family members purchasing pixels, but as word of the website spread and it got more attention, many businesses started buying pixels for advertising.  At first glance, it makes no sense why people would spend money on this, but they saw it as a simple, yet clever idea for a young man to pay for college.  Because they found it humorous and cleaver, some people where willing to pay for pixels, which started a chain reaction with the site becoming increasingly popular and the pixels becoming more valuable as a advertising tool.  Alex was actually a talented entrepreneur and not a one hit wonder.  Since raising this money to pay for his education, he has put his degree to good use and is no the co-found and co-CEO of Calm, which is currently the number one app for meditation and sleep that is designed to help people relax.  Alex shows that you do not necessarily have to have a life-changing idea to be a successful entrepreneur, you just have to be creative and relate to people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage

4 Comments
Categories : Great Ideas

Ben Francis: Gymshark

Posted by zeislerzt1 
· Monday, September 28th, 2020 
· 2 Comments

Ben Francis started Gymshark in 2012 while in college because he couldn’t find fitness apparel that he liked.  The brand has since exploded into a $1.3 Billion company.  This growth was only possible because Ben Francis was able to find an underserved target market and effectively meet their needs.  Gymshark target 18-25 year old’s who are into fitness and does not go outside of this group.  This allows them to really focus on this one narrow audience of people and meet their needs better than nearly every other company in the industry and build strong brand loyalty.  The brand cares a lot about their target audience and this was shown when the website crashed one year during Black Friday, causing many customers to miss out on discounts.  In response, Ben Francis personally hand wrote 2,500 apology letters to customers that offered them the discounts they missed out on.  Also, during the pandemic lockdown, Gymshark hired personal trainers who were not otherwise able to work to produce videos for the Gymshark fitness app.  Gymshark has also used social media influencers for marketing.  This strategy may not work for many companies, but it did for Gymshark because they were able to accurately reach their target audience.  Customers in Gymshark’s target audience take notice of things like this and want to support the business because it meets their needs and represents their values.  The fast growth of Gymshark would not have been possible without Ben Francis’ innovation and ability to empathize with and connect with his target audience to create strong brand loyalty.

2 Comments
Categories : Apparel/Accessories, Uncategorized

Sean McVay Creating a New Prototype for NFL Head Coaches

Posted by zeislerzt1 
· Monday, September 14th, 2020 
· 6 Comments

In 2018, at age 33, Sean McVay became the youngest coach to ever lead a team to the Super Bowl.  When he was hired as the Los Angeles Ram’s head coach less than 2 years earlier, many people had doubts that he had the experience to successfully coach and NFL team, as most coaches to not get a chance to be head coaches in the NFL until their 40s or 50s.  However, despite his lack of experience, Sean McVay was able to quickly find success by seeing the game differently than his head coaching peers.  McVay grew up around the game of football, as his grandfather was an NFL head coach and his father and uncle both played college football.  McVay played quarterback in high school and wide receiver in college, so his family history and experience playing multiple positions helped him to develop a deep understanding of the game at a young age.  McVay had the ability to easily understand all the complicated schematics of an NFL offense, which allowed him to use his entrepreneurial mindset to to find new ways of helping an offense put points on the scoreboard more efficiently.  This was evident in home much better young quarterback Jared Goff performed under McVay as opposed to under the old Ram’s coach.  Goff completed a higher percentage of his passes for more touchdowns and less interceptions once McVay took over as head coach.  McVay’s leadership has also been credited as a reason why he has found success so quickly as a coach.  He is friendly to his players and works well with them, but also knows how to push players to get the most out of them.  This leadership is another trait that is important to an innovator in any field.  This innovative style of coaching has caught on in the NFL and made McVay sort of a disrupter in the industry, as other teams have recently hired Matt LaFleur and Kliff Kingsbury, who are two other young coaches that are similar to McVay.  While we wouldn’t normally look at NFL coaches as entrepreneurs, the way that Sean McVay has changed the way teams play offense and hire young head coaches have shown that he is an innovator with an entrepreneurial mindset.

https://www.businessinsider.com/nfl-coaches-hired-sean-mcvay-2019-1

6 Comments
Categories : Athletics, Sports