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Buzzings Around The Dating World

Posted by cummingsld17

· Thursday, October 11th, 2018

· 2 Comments

After co-founding one of the world’s most popular dating apps, Whitney Wolfe Herd refused to be silent about some of the issues she had discovered about this app. While using Tinder, she experienced sexual harassment and later decided to sue Tinder because of this. A long battle began along with hate mail, threatening her life from total strangers causing her to leave Tinder and her home. She never wanted to be in the dating industry again until she reconnected with Andreev, owner of the world’s largest dating network, reaching over 190 countries. He saw her potential years prior and reached out to this young entrepreneur, now age 25. When discussing their new dating site ideas, Whitney asked, “What if women make the first move, send the first message? And if they don’t, the match disappears after 24 hours, like in Cinderella, the pumpkin and the carriage? It’d be symbolic of a Sadie Hawkins dance–going after it, girls ask first. What if we could hardwire that into a product?” This question has shaped how their site has been developed, gearing it towards women and keeping the app safer to use. The way the site is set up also eliminates most of the nude photos lurking within most of other online dating sites, making the searching aspect an unpleasant experience. Whitney and Andreev decided to name their new company Bumble, which received over 100,000 downloads within the first month. The company is now a billion dollar business, with over 12.5 million users. It has expanded to platonic friendships, which Tinder has now also implemented. Even though Whitney Wolfe Herd went though a terrible experience with her past company, her past experiences have led her to the company that finally puts women first in the dating world, opening the door to a different way of viewing dating apps.

2 Comments

Categories : App

The Billion-Dollar Basement Startup

Posted by PlominskiCC18

· Wednesday, October 10th, 2018

· 6 Comments

Beginning his career in IT consulting, Carl Rodrigues quit his sound job in 2001 with a mission to innovate something extraordinary. It is said that Rodrigues quit his job without any real idea. A risky move for someone who had relatively little savings. After a month, Rodrigues created a software platform which integrated the use of your mobile phone from your laptop.

Image result for carl rodrigues

This is a very useful platform for business professionals who work on their computers all day but might have their assistant answer calls during the day. It allows for the executives, per say, to control their phone from their computer. Rodrigues named his company Soti. His first twelve months were slow, according to the BBC article. Today, Soti is valued at over $1 billion. Rodrigues’ success is a tribute to hard work, dedication, and the willingness to believe in himself despite what others say.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40504764

6 Comments

Categories : App, Business, Software, Technology

How Marc Benioff Became a Millionaire by Age 25

Posted by SedwickCA1

· Wednesday, October 10th, 2018

· 4 Comments

Marc Benioff, co-founder of Salesforce, showcases his incredible entrepreneurial ability by racing to millionaire status at age 25. How did he accomplish this monumental achievement so quickly? Key factors like software development, humble beginnings, and wise mentors helped skyrocket Benioff’s success as an entrepreneur.

Marc had a passion for developing software. He sold his first software product at just 15 years old. It was a software called “How to Juggle” priced to the buyer at $75. A strong start for young Benioff. He continued, at the age of 15, to develop and sell Atari 800 games such as Escape From Vulcan’s Isle and King Arthur’s Heir. Marc surely showcased his computer and coding prowess. However, none of it would have been possible without this humble start.

Benioff had the opportunity, through the permission of his parents, to work at a jewelry store. He would work there after school hours and do work such as cleaning the floors. This allowed him to save up enough money to purchase his first computer. Little did young Benioff know, this would be the first brick in building his largely successful career.

Continuing to develop his professional skills for 10 years at Oracle, Marc became a millionaire at the young age of 25. He worked as an executive where his salary quickly added up to the millionaire mark.

Marc dreamed of bigger things than what Oracle could offer and began to be inspired to change the way people upgrade their software through the development of the large, well-known company, Salesforce. Salesforce, Benioff says, would not exist without the mentorship he received from Steve Jobs. Marc developed the #1 customer relationship management (CRM) platform. It is a cloud-based application for sales, service, marketing and more. They allow a company to log in and begin connecting to customers without the help of an IT expert.

4 Comments

Categories : App, Bootstrap Business, Business, Websites, Youngest Entrepreneurs

Evan Spiegel – Co-founder, Snapchat

Posted by SchwarzCE18

· Wednesday, October 10th, 2018

· 1 Comment

Snapchat, the social media app with over 300 million active monthly users, had its humble beginnings in the dorm rooms of three college students. While studying product design at Stanford, Evan Spiegel proposed a temporary message app as part of a class project. The idea was met with ridicule from fellow classmates. However, later that year Spiegel along with classmates Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown, worked to create a prototype of the idea. Initially called Picaboo, the project was later renamed Snapchat and received significant popularity in 2012. By the end of 2012 the app had reached over 1 million active daily users. Spiegel describes the company’s mission statement as, “Snapchat isn’t about capturing the traditional Kodak moment. It’s about communicating with the full range of human emotion — not just what appears to be pretty or perfect.” Snapchat seeks to differ from other major social media platforms by reducing the stress of having personal information stored on a profile.

Despite ridicule and discouragement from fellow classmates, Spiegel persisted with an idea that he felt had potential. He acted on that idea and is now the worlds youngest billionaire. His story is inspiring in many ways, but particularly in his passion for something that was seen by others as foolish. While there is certainly wisdom in taking the advice of others, some of the best ideas in history were initially met with ridicule. Perseverance in situations such as these can be inspiring.

1 Comment

Categories : App, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Social Media

Christopher Gray – Scholly – Scholarships

Posted by warricknj18

· Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018

· 4 Comments

Christopher Gray grew up in poverty in Birmingham, Alabama. He had a single mom, and two younger siblings. None of his family had ever gone to college, but he was hoping to be the first. He did not really have anyone to help him pay for college, since his mom had lost her job during the recession in 2008. He was determined to find out how to get to and pay for college, so he started looking for scholarships. He did not have a computer at home, so he used the library computers where usage time was limited. He would also write his application essays on paper at home, then type them into the application on his phone. All of his hard work paid off, though. In the end, his total was $1.3 million in scholarships that he had earned.
Christopher could have stopped there and been satisfied with just going to college and living his own life, but he did not. He knew that there were thousands of other people just like him who wanted or needed scholarships, but there was not a good process out there for finding them. He also learned that about $100 million in scholarships go unclaimed each year.
So, he started Scholly, an online program to match students with scholarships. He developed a patent-pending algorithm to select the scholarships that fit each student, based on information about them. His major breakthrough came when he appeared on Shark Tank in November, 2015. Within the first few hours after the show was aired, Scholly received 80,000 requests. Scholly now has almost two million users. It has also connected students with over $100 million in scholarships to further their education.
Christopher Gray is an excellent example of someone who saw and experienced a problem, and figured out how to fix it. He has made the lives of many future college students much easier, and he looks forward to continuing to do that with further innovations to the program.

4 Comments

Categories : App, Business, College, Education, Social Entrepreneur, Technology

Venmo the revolutionary money sharing idea of our generation

Posted by demeom20

· Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018

· 11 Comments

Every college student at some point in time has a moment where they wish they could create the next best thing and become rich. For Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail that is exactly what happened. These two college roommates came up with the idea for Venmo. Venmo is an app that allows people to give and receive money. If you forgot your wallet, no problem you can ask someone to pay for you and they can Venmo you the money right then and there.

Kortina and Magdon- Ismail developed this idea at first when they were trying to help friend start yogurt shop, they noticed the lacking of traditional sales software and wished they had something new to help fix it. At a local jazz show, Kortina and Magdon-Ismail thought of the idea of being able to buy a MP3 of the show instantly with a text message. Later, the idea was reinforced when Magdon-Ismail forgot his wallet during a trip, and needed to pay back a friend. He noticed how much of an inconvenience, especially compared to the possibility of mobile phone-based transactions it was to repay his friend for the money borrowed. They then started to work on a way to send money through their cell phones. Their original prototype used text messages but then quickly turned into a mobile app that we know today as venmo.

The company is now worth eight hundred million dollars and is growing steadily. These two college student turned a bright idea into a thriving business and now are their own bosses and live their dream lives. Starting as roommates at the University of Pennsylvania to now being business partners this idea was they start of a revolutionary company and the start to a lifelong friendship.

Image result for venmo creator

11 Comments

Categories : App, Business, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Smartphone

This Australian Teen is Worth How Much?

Posted by fisherkoons

· Monday, October 1st, 2018

· 2 Comments

Ben Pasternak, teen genius, is changing the social technology industry at just 19. Born in Sydney, Australia, Pasternak was raised in an average home with parents who supported him greatly throughout his upbringing. One day during a boring high school science class, Pasternak completed his first app, Impossible Rush. Impossible Rush and his second app Impossible Dial were wildly successful, pulling millions of downloads and were both the No. 1 trending app in multiple countries. The success of this young teen was the beginning of his career and lead to him being the youngest recipient of venture capital for technology at just 15 years old. He proceeded to drop out high school to focus completely on his career in technology. It was this decision as well as incredible opportunity that lead him to relocate to a $5,000/month New York City flat. Pasternak’s next project was an Ebayesque app that was specifically made for teens called Flogg. By the age of just 17, Pasternak was worth over a whopping 2 million dollars, but he was heavily restricted by his parents as well as business partners so as to not let the teenager waste it carelessly. He was named one of TIME magazines most influential teens in 2016.

This Australian teen is inspiring because he is true to himself and extremely relatable. He cannot cook anything other freezer-isle pizza, forgets to pay his rent, and refuses to learn how to drive. He believes that cars will be a thing of the past soon enough that getting a license is a waste of time at this point. Pasternak is your every day teenage with a brilliant method behind his success. He claims that the secret formula is truly understanding your target audience. Ben has accomplished this quite accurately because he is his target audience at old 19 years of age. While middle aged individuals try to crack the code and get into the mind of a teen, Pasternak is at quite the advantage. Due to this method of his, Pasternak has comprised his team of extremely young individuals, the oldest (COO) being 30. Ben Pasternak and his now business partner, Isiah Turner, are co-founders of the app “Monkey”. The high school dropout described this new venture as, “a randomized video-chat program for teenagers… Chatroulette, without the pervs”. Funded by $2 million in angel investments, Monkey quickly amassed hundreds of thousands of users who made more than 250 million calls. Pasternak and Turner describe Monkey’s purpose as to, “fill the loneliness void in teenagers’ by helping them make internet friends around the world, who they can then talk to on Snapchat.” Monkey has an extremely strict code of conduct, and prides itself as being a ‘safe space’ for young users.

Ben Pasternak is changing the way young teens are viewing their careers. Their entire perspective on entrepreneurship and social technology is being shaped in completely different ways. All of this and more is being accomplished by your typical teen with yeezys and a hoverboard.

2 Comments

Categories : App, Creating, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Services, Smartphone, Social Media, Technology, Youngest Entrepreneurs

Tags : resale, Social Media, Technology, teen entrepreneurs

Whitney Wolfe Helps You Find Your Honey On Bumble

Posted by Ethan Hayward

· Tuesday, September 18th, 2018

· 1 Comment

Just a few years ago, finding love on the internet would be about as risky as it was embarrassing. “What makes you so desperate?” many asked. But today, US online dating boasts annual revenues of over 3 billion that continue to climb. Clearly, there’s a strong market in streamlining the connections we make with strangers we find attractive. Perhaps the anonymity and scalability a Tinder profile provides became one of the most exciting changes to dating our culture has ever entertained.

Whitney Wolfe was hired as a marketer for Tinder. There she innovated ways to reach and saturate new markets of bachelors and bachelorettes. After leaving Tinder following bouts of online abuse, sexual discrimination, and a lawsuit, she founded Bumble. All before her 25th birthday.

Bumble Logo

After leaving behind the trauma of online abuse and with the encouragement of an early investor, Wolfe resolved to change the culture of an abusive online dating culture. In an interview for an NPR program, Wolfe succinctly frames the problem current dating platforms left unaddressed.

“Men are raised from very early age to be the go-getter in a heterosexual relationship. Go get her. Go make the move, right? And women, on the flipside, are trained to play hard to get. So here you’re telling men to be overtly aggressive, and here you’re telling women to be the inverse of that. And so now you’re training two human beings to act in opposite directions of each other. And so what you do when you do that is you set both up for failure” – Whitney Wolfe, How I Built This: Bumble

To remedy this, Bumble withholds all connections until the female user permits the male to start messaging. If you’re interested in hearing more about how this app has accumulated 28 million downloads since it’s launch in 2014, read or listen to the interview linked above. Wolfe is a fantastic example of how a well-framed problem with a brilliant solution delivered can propel an entrepreneur to be worth as much as 250 million.

1 Comment

Categories : App, College, Women Entrepreneurs

Evan Spiegel – The World’s Youngest Billionaire

Posted by PanazziBD18

· Monday, September 17th, 2018

· 3 Comments

Evan Spiegel, who was born in 1990, became the world’s youngest billionaire at the age of 25. He accomplished this by developing a particular app; an app that is now practically synonymous with the word “millennial.” That app, which started out as Picaboo, would later be renamed to Snapchat. Evan founded his company with the help of his friends Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown, and their app grew to over a million users in just one year. What’s so great about Snapchat was the fact that it solved a problem most people didn’t know they even had – the need to send temporary messages to someone. At first, when Evan pitched this idea to his friends in 2011, they ridiculed it. Now, with Snapchat boasting over 150 million daily users, it’s safe to say that Evan had a truly amazing idea, and he knew just what to do with it. Evan Spiegel is an important role model to me in the field of entrepreneurship; not just because of his incredible success, but because of the difficulties he faced when he was going through the process of growing his company, and how he responded to them.

When Evan first started his company, he faced some difficulties with getting investors, since none of them really thought being able to send temporary messages was a good idea. However, he didn’t quit, he didn’t give up; he kept at it, and pushed harder and harder to find someone to invest in his company. He was successful eventually, but who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t persisted with his idea? One thing’s for sure, he definitely wouldn’t have become the world’s youngest billionaire. Read More →

3 Comments

Categories : App, Communication, Online Companies