For most of us our first job usually looks something like 7$ an hour working a register, flipping patties, or stocking shelves, but for Garett Gee his first job was starting his own company and receiving over a million dollars in seed funding before he even graduated college. Gee is a young kid from a small town in Utah that made a great guess and a great product. In 2011 while at BYU the iPad 2 was set to come out and Gee realized that that meant there would be some blog stating what the top 10 apps anyone needs for it and he was determined to be on this list. Gee’s idea was to create an app that was beautiful and effective in the QR code market. Gee said about the smart code industry, ““When I came across smart codes for the first time, I thought, ‘Wow, this is really cool technology in a really ugly, crowded space. Someone should make a pretty product for this.'” As Gee began to navigate Utah trying to find someone to support him and his idea one investor asked ‘why should we choose you when I could partner with a company with much more experience?’ Gee gave a simple straightforward and honest answer and won over his investor, “because we’re young and we were raised on the iPhone—we know the ins and outs of it.” Gee’s Scan was a huge success and his ‘rookie’ team was making a huge splash! In less than a year Scan has over 10 million downloads and is used in over 75 countries. He also got onto the list that he predicted there would be. For a kid from a tiny town in Utah I would say he is doing pretty well for himself. Scan now has 9 employees and Gee’s next plan is to figure out he to make his free app Scan profitable. Gee believes that his product will remain on top in such a crowded market in the future. When asked what he thinks he said, “When someone sees our logo they understand it’s associated with quality, speed, and good user experiences.” If your interested in more young entrepreneurs making a difference pull out your Scan app and scan below! 
Archive for App – Page 17
We live in an age of technological insecurity. With the seemingly endless digital accounts that people have these days between banking, email, Facebook and other social media, there is a heightened risk that one of those accounts will be hacked. Passwords are becoming increasingly weak and obsolete as hackers improve their methods at breaking in and stealing personal information. The news is always proclaiming the latest security breach at the hands of computer hackers and yet not much has been done to improve the security of these accounts. Until now.
LaunchKey is a truly innovative application that allows you to quickly and securely log into an online account without having to use a password. Just swipe your smartphone and you are in. It works by pairing any personal account like banking or a blog account with your LaunchKey account and whenever you need to log in, it will send your phone a notification for you to swipe and therefore log in. No more trying to remember dozens of unique passwords that you fear may be cracked. LaunchKey has simplified and bolstered the the process of securing and logging into accounts.
Geoff Sanders (far right) was 28 when he launched LaunchKey (pun intended). He raised over $750,000 in start up funds to design and promote his product. His goal is to streamline the sign-in process by making passwords a tool of the past. By doing so he has solved two big problems when it comes to using passwords.
1) The awkwardness of remembering countless combinations of letters, words and characters.
2) The danger of someone hacking into your personal and private accounts.
Sanders’ vision is to see big corporations make the switch and avoid the risk of security breaches. LaunchKey will also alert you if another person is trying to access your account. The possibilities are endless. Anything that can connect to the internet is an option. In the future you may be able to unlock your front door or start your car with LaunchKey.
Derek Pacque found the inspiration for his business, CoatChex, when he lost his coat when he was out one night because there was no coat check. His business originally started as a simple, collapsible coat checking business that operated inside local bars, but he quickly became frustrated with the traditional model of giving customers a ticket when they check their coat, meant to be exchanged at the end of the night for their coat back. Customers constantly lost their tickets and coats were easily confused. So, Derek innovated a new coat checking system. Instead of using tickets, CoatChex uses its own app, pictures, and QR codes, which not only makes the coat checking process much simpler, but has the potential to create even more revenue for the business because the venues that CoatChex works in desire information about their customers that CoatChex can get through their app and provide to the venues.
CoatChex actually worked at the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis and did over $100,000 in sales, incredible!
Derek appeared on the TV show Shark Tank, asking for $200,000 for a 10% share of CoatChex. Mark Cuban offered him $200,000 for 33% equity, but Derek turned him down, unwilling to give up that much of his business. He is now seeking $1 million from angel investors to use his technology in other services and develop brand partnerships.
Derek Pacque is an exemplary entrepreneur, not because he simply found a solution to a problem, but because he developed that solution even further when it had problems of its own. He went beyond the simple solution and innovated to find a better one.
For more information, I encourage you to visit their website, http://www.coatchex.com/, (which, might I say, is very well designed).
Yik Yak has become extremely popular not only at Grove City College but around the world. It is an app that allows people to anonymously post within a 1.5 mile radius of users in your area.
Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll, graduated in 2013 from Furman University in South Carolina. While in school they worked on a few startup ideas together during their senior year and put their careers on hold to build a company after they graduated.
Yik Yak was born in 2013 and quickly became very popular. Buffington and Droll word spread very quickly and they raised $10 million dollars in funding.
According to businessinsider.com, “Since January, the founders say growth has been organic and the app is used heavily (by thousands of students) on about 250 campuses. At some of the schools, as many as 10,000 students are on it and 100 new messages are posted every ten minutes. At smaller schools, the app has penetrated 80% of student bodies.”
The only negative thing about Yik Yak is that some of the users abuse the fact that everyone is anonymously posting. Some bullying is happening on the site but Buffington and Droll hope to bring the bulling to an end in the near future.
By putting their careers on hold, Buffington and Droll accomplished something incredible. It goes to show that with the right idea and an incredible amount of will power one can push through difficult situations to succeed.
Ehrsam is a 25 year old Duke graduate who worked as an asset manager and investor for Goldman Sachs before he founded his company. His company is named Coinbase, it is essentially a virtual wallet for Bitcoin. It functions the same way as Pay Pal but uses a different currency. Bitcoin for those of you who do not know, is a new form of virtual currency. It is used globally and about $1.5 Billion worth of Bitcoins are in circulation. The major problem with Bitcoin is that it is very volatile, when the new currency was introduced, it was valued at $1200, now it is down to just over $330. Ehrsam is working to help provide more security to Coinbase users by allowing the user to instantly sell the Bitcoins when they are received to avoid deflation and the varying prices. Coinbase, makes it easier for companies to make large payments more easily as well as make transactions with foreign companies and dealing with exchange rates. Coinbase is available in 19 different countries as of now and is looking to expand. Ehrsam is attempting to make Bitcoin more mainstream. He has used the same model as Pay Pal but has put his own spin on it, Coinbase
allows the user to save their Bitcoins using the vault portion of the app. The vault is set up in a way that the currency can be stored safely, as well as allowing you and your business partner, or whoever you share the account with to cosign withdrawals digitally to avoid users to make unauthorized withdrawals. There are about 37,000 business that trust and accept Bitcoin, but the problem is that there are not enough users of this new currency. I’m interested to see where this business takes Ehrsam. Coinbase has almost 2 million users so far and is the “World’s most popular Bitcoin service.” Pay Pal is very successful and Elon Musk has moved on to bigger and better things, I’m wondering if Ehrsam will do the same, and his company will keep expanding, or if Coinbase will fail because of Bitcoin’s unpopularity and constantly changing exchange value.
Evan Spiegel, 24-year-old co-founder of Snapchat, showcases many exemplary traits that makes him an incredible entrepreneur.
Spiegel grew up in Pacific Palisades, California in a very successful environment because his parents were both outstanding lawyers.
He attended Stanford University, where he studied product design. Spiegel proposed Snapchat as a class project which quickly became a hit. In 2012, he dropped out to focus on Snapchat with only 3 classes left before he could have completed his degree.
On Snapchat.com the description says, “Enjoy fast and fun mobile conversation. Snap a photo or video, add a caption, and send it to a friend. They’ll view it, laugh, and then the Snap disappears form the screen – unless they take a screenshot.” This is not only creative but innovative. Over 700 million Snaps are sent each day.
Spiegel at the age of 23 turned down a $3 billion purchase by Facebook. He is proof that real success comes from taking big risks.
Spiegel is an inspiration to all young entrepreneurs because he demonstrated that if you are passionate about something and you work hard anything is possible.
Instagram is a photo sharing, mobile, and social networking website/app that has become extremely popular. It enables its users to take pictures and videos, make edits, and share them on a variety of different social networking platforms.
Kevin Systrom graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Management Science & Engineering. His first intern experience was through Odeo which later became Twitter.
Mike Krieger also graduated from Stanford University where he studied Symbolic Systems with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction. During his time at Stanford, he interned on Microsoft’s PowerPoint team as a PM and at Foxmarks as a software developer. He also wrote his Master’s thesis on how user interfaces can better support collaboration on a large scale before getting connected with Instagram.
Together Krieger and Systrom (in the picture above) founded Instagram, and launched it in 2010.
Instantly Instagram became a household name with over 200 million active monthly users. Personally, one of my favorite features on Instagram is the ability to edit photos with multiple different filters before you post a picture. This allows people to do all of the editing on Instagram rather than having to use separate apps which was a pain.
Two of the most important things that Instagram has accomplished is its ability to achieve financial support from investors. Without the financial backing of investors, Instagram would have been unable to start up as a company. To truly get a scope of the size of the deal investors made, one must look no further than to the first venture capital firms that put up seed money for Instagram: Andreesen Horowitz’s original $250,000 investment is now worth a whopping $78 million. That is 78 followed by six zeroes. A return of 312 times the initial investment. Secondly, Instagram added hashtags to its site which encouraged users connect with each other and see pictures from all over the world. This was evolutionary.
Without a doubt, Instagram is going to be around for a long time.
Garrett Gee is somewhat of a digital prophet. While attending Brigham University in 2011 he became interested in creating a better app for scanning barcodes and QR codes. Gee saw that the current apps were clunky and difficult to use and saw an opening in the market for improvement, especially with the upcoming release of the i-Pad 2. He predicted that by the release of the i-Pad 2 there would be a list of the top ten apps to get, and he wanted a spot on that list. From this thought was born Scan.
Gee’s business idea was so convincing, he garnered 1.7 million dollars in seed funding from venture capitalists even before the i-Pad was released. Because of his hard work and keen foresight, Gee’s efforts paid off with crushing success. Within a year Scan had over 10 million downloads; doubling that within the next year, all a the age of 21. While many college graduates are struggling to make ends meet, Garrett Gee was giving his competition a run for their money.
Garrett Gee inspires me because I believe he embodies the two most important traits of an entrepreneur; a readiness to take risks, and an aptitude for reading the market and the demands of the future. Not only was he able to have the guts to go for his plan, he also had the keen sense of how his product would find a place in the market. These two characteristics gave him the jump he needed to outstrip his competition and nail a place in a very ruthless market.
Most teenagers and young adults are familiar with Snapchat and use it almost every day. Many however, do not know the story behind the widely popular app. Evan Spiegel, a Stanford drop out, started the company with two other guys while they were in college. The idea came to Spiegel when his friend came into his room to complain about a photo he sent that he wished would disappear. This led to the initial idea of pictures that would vanish after a certain period of time upon receiving them. Spiegel and his partner Bobby Murphy, found a programmer who could create a prototype. The app was not very successful in the beginning. The original name was Picaboo, and only hosted around 130 users. Siegel however, did not come out with a clear intention for the app, the team toyed with the idea of marketing the app as an adult picture messaging with the statement “Picaboo lets you and your boyfriend send photos for peeks and not keeps!” Thank God they refrained from publicizing that idea. There was no real intended user for the app, but after looking at patterns in usage, Spiegal and his team discovered that students were using it during class to send notes and communicate because social media such as Facebook was blocked. Snapchat has revolutionized social media. It allows users to practice their photography skills by taking selfies, as well as posting photos to your story and sending temporary photos to your friends. Snapchat has gone toe to toe with Facebook’s app Poke. Poke was an app developed by Facebook that has the same concept of Snapchat. The average age of Facebook’s user went from 18 to 40. Snapchat’s users, on average, are younger than that of Facebook’s, which factors into the success of Snapchat over Facebook. I personally use Snapchat because it is easier than most other social networks and can be more personal. I enjoy sending pictures and short videos to my friends and I can even communicate with my cousins in England instantly and easily. Spiegel had the opportunity to sell his company and cash out and retire at 24. After beating out Facebook’s app, Poke, Zuckerberg offered to buy the company for $3 billion. Spiegel turned down the offer and still runs the company today. Snapchat is still a young company and I am excited to see what will happen to Spiegel and what the future of the company holds.
Brian Wong CEO of Kiip
At the age of 18 Brian Wong had skipped 4 grades and graduated from college. At 20 he was listed in Forbes 30 under 30 , named one of the top 5 young entrepreneurs by Mashables, and is one of the youngest people to have ever received money from a venture capital firm. Wong was on the fast track and after losing his job after only 5 months after graduating Wong turned this misfortune into a multi-million dollar idea. In 2010 Wong founded Kiip, a marketing company that gives tangible rewards for virtual success. Wong’s brilliant plan hit him while in an airport while people watching. What he noticed was that everyone was either “pretending to work” or playing a game on their phone. What he realized was that ads had been appearing at the worst possible time. As one reaches pure ecstasy as they win that baseball game or feels so smart after debunking a challenging candy crush level these ads were appearing! Its as if their prize for finally conquering the pesky boss was the opportunity to be bombarded by ads. What Wong saw was an opportunity to turn that thrill of virtual success and capitalize off of it. Wong’s company Kiip, (pronounced “keep’), partners with companies, such as Disney, Gatorade, and Pepsi, as well as apps and app developers to create in game achievements that allow for real world rewards. For example a runner who just completes a 5 mile run and records it in RunKeeper may receive a free bottle of Propel. Or maybe you finally eclipse level 1oo in candy crush and you may have just been rewarded with a free bag of sour patch kids. In essence Wong has joined together some of our favorite things in life, winning and free stuff, and has launched the marketing and advertising business in a whole new direction. I believe that this idea of Kiip is going to become the new way of advertising as the digital age becomes more and more prevalent. Wong makes his money on a cost-per-engagement (CPE) basis, such as when a user submits an e-mail address to claim a reward (as 25 million have done so far). Kiip typically earns 30 cents to $3 per CPE, depending on targeting criteria, and splits the fee 50-50 with developers. The company reaches 10 million active users daily, up from 4 million last year; annual revenue is between $10 million and $20 million. At the ripe old age of 23 Brian Wong has forever changed the way we advertise and has made a nice little chunk of change doing it. In the mean time be on the look out for those kiip rewards who knows your mad candy crush skills may finally pay off!