Catherine Cook and her siblings were star academics. Her older brother Geoff graduated from Harvard and sold his first business by the age of 24, which inspired her to start her own while still in high school. She was looking through her yearbook, and she realized the shortcomings of a hard copy yearbook, and the potential benefits if it was taken online. She and her younger brother, Dave, created an online yearbook site containing some aspects of a social media platform with the intent of connecting friends as well as people who don’t yet know one another. At first, MyYearbook was launched and advertised in their hometown of New Hope, Pennsylvania. After the site took off, Geoff Cook stepped in and invested a quarter of a million, becoming MyYearbook’s CEO. A year later, they had a million users and began seeking investments for major upscaling. Investors then gave them nearly 4.1 million in investments, and their business became a nationwide phenomenon, and one of the country’s 25 most trafficked websites. Last year, they merged with Quepasa in a 100 million dollar deal, and now hope to bring their company worldwide.

Catherine Cook’s story is inspiring, because she created the most prolific online yearbook site in the country while still attending school. In her interview, she said her grades slipped dramatically because she was spending so much time managing MyYearbook. She nearly lost credit in some of her classes she missed school so much. Luckily the school went easy on her and she could continue to juggle both until she graduated. This story shows the level of devotion to your idea that is necessary for success, as well as the speed at which an idea can go from a dream to a million dollar reality.