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Brother-Sister Pair Create Multi-Million Dollar Online Yearbook

Posted by murphybm1

· Sunday, October 14th, 2018

· 4 Comments

Who knew that a pair of brother-sister millennial entrepreneurs could create a multi-million dollar business by the ripe ages of 14 and 25? Geoff and Catherine Cook of New Hope, Pennsylvania, built a website called MyYearbook from the ground up – and they did this while Catherine was still in high school. In 2002, when their family decided to make the move to New Hope, Catherine was extremely interested in making new friends at her new high school. One day, she was flipping through the pages of her yearbook when she realized that this was not the most efficient way to make new friends. She thought if only there was an online yearbook where she could reach out to people who did not already know her, but who were interested in making new friends as well. She brought the idea up to her already successful brother who had recently graduated from Harvard and had sold a few of his own companies, and he jumped right on board. He invested a whopping $250,000 and stepped in as CEO. These siblings launched what would become one of the nation’s most-trafficked websites from the comfort of their parents’ home. Within the first week of its launch, 400 users had already signed up and were avidly using the site. After reaching out to investors and focusing on branding their company as “MySpace for high school”, Catherine and Geoff were able to hire a team of engineers to expand their company even further. In 2011, MyYearBook merged with Quespasa – a $100 million deal – that allowed them to reach an even larger Brazilian and Mexican audience, with the new name of: MeetMe. Through this deal, they were able to take their website worldwide and affect millions of people around the globe.

Catherine and Geoff Cook are exemplary millennial entrepreneurs because they started with a simple idea, and through hard work and dedication, they were able to create a world-wide business out of their parents’ home. They were motivated and dedicated, a combination that would drive them to succeed and achieve even more than they could have imagined. Catherine had a vision and at the age of 14 was able to pursue her dreams by pushing every limit and overcoming every stereotype that tried to hinder her. She did not allow her age to stop her, nor did she allow the opinions of others at her new school to impede her goals. She simply worked countless hours, contacted the right people, and most importantly never gave up.

I believe Catherine and Geoff’s story is inspiring and can teach many lessons. Their passion and persistence led them to astounding success and drove them to continually innovate their idea. Catherine talked to other students every day while Geoff networked online to truly see what others though of their site. They constantly critiqued, tweaked, and pivoted their idea based on their target audience’s desires so that MyYearbook became one of the most popular social networking sites in the world.
This has taught me the importance of continuous improvement. I believe that products and ideas can always be improved. As society changes and technology, stereotypes, and expectations change along with it, companies need to constantly develop their products. Even a successful product can always be improved because improvement leads to more success. This is a concept that I intend to bring into the products and businesses that I create both now and in the future.

4 Comments

Categories : Academia, App, Business, College, Communication, Creating, Education, Great Ideas, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Online Companies, Social Media, Technology, Websites, Women Entrepreneurs, Youngest Entrepreneurs

Tags : millenial entrepreneurs, Social Media, websites, yearbook

Your Brokenness is Welcome Here

Posted by stewartlg1

· Friday, October 12th, 2018

· 3 Comments

It doesn’t take long scrolling through social media to feel like you’re missing out on the life that someone else is enjoying. So many girls are left feeling broken and inadequate from a society that thrives off of likes, shares, and comments. Jordan Lee Dooley, 24, is on a mission to change the culture of social media as she helps “everyday girls live intentional lives.” Her hobby turned blog turned business, SoulScripts, has become an online ministry for young women seeking their purpose.

SoulScripts originated in the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority house at Indiana University, while Dooley was a student in 2015. Her Etsy shop included personally hand-lettered mugs and journals with scripture and Biblical quotes. Eventually, she expanded her business into a blog where she tackled the personal topics behind the scripture, keeping the name SoulScripts as the title of it. It didn’t take long before she quickly discovered that this was the purpose God had for her life and pursued her true passion of writing and speaking full time.

She now travels all over the country speaking at churches and events, while also writing for her blog and Instagram. Dooley is telling her own story one post at a time as she encourages other women to seek Christ first while also giving advice on finance, relationships, self care, faith and more. She tells of her own times of heartbreak and brokenness and how God saw her through to the other side.

With an Instagram following of over 200,000 followers, she turned a college hobby into a full blown business. Dooley has since expanded Soul Scripts into a podcast named SHE, and her book, Purpose, about “breaking through insecurities, expectations, and the pressure to prove” comes out in 2019. She also leads a twelve week Bible Study Boot Camp called Soul Session that includes access to a Facebook group with her and other Soul Session members, 12 Bible study videos, and 12 downloadable worksheets for $97.

Jordan’s mantra of “Your brokenness is welcome here” has become a movement that is being worn by girls all over the country. She is promoting authenticity and encouraging women to pursue their purpose. Her passion turned purpose has led other girls to lead intentional lives of pursuing Christ and knowing their identity is determined by their faith in Christ.

https://jordanleedooley.com/

instagram.com/jordanleedooley

instagram.com/SHEpodcast

instagram.com/soulscripts

3 Comments

Categories : App, Art, Business, College, Creating, Decor, Social Media, Websites, Women Entrepreneurs

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

Moving? Need Junk Hauled? Get the Boys

Posted by colfleshdj17

· Friday, September 21st, 2018

· 5 Comments

It is such a pain to move someone in or out of their house. It usually requires a team of people who are close with the person that is moving, and sometimes not everybody is available. Sometimes moving companies are hired, yes, but they can consist of some old dudes that move really slow and are not motivated to get the job completed. If only there was a way to help people move in and out a lot quicker. Now, we turn to the people classified as collegiate men. They are full of energy and are usually looking for a chance to make a quick buck here or there, whether it be for textbooks, movies or going out to the bar. There is definitely a connection here.

“On a hot summer’s day in 2003, two college buddies borrowed a beat-up cargo van and dubbed themselves College Hunks Hauling Junk.” Withing a short period of time, College Hunks expanded its franchising efforts and took off across the United States and Canada. College Hunks is a moving service that will also haul junk out of your house if that is what plan you pick. This just goes to show that you can literally start a company off of anything and you really do not need any experience to make a living (for certain jobs, of course). Moving houses is definitely a pain in the butt, and it is awesome to see that a company with smiling faces and dedication to what they do is out there.

I think that this is one of the best company ideas out there, and it was created pretty much out of nowhere and without any experience. They had the concept of thinking about what people struggle with and decided to do the dirty work themselves. On top of earning a bunch of awards since the founding of the company, they have a very good reputation and always leave their customers satisfied. That is a critical part in the business realm; without happy customers, you will not get any business… no business, no revenue. The idea of College Hunks is very inspiring and creative. I would definitely consider using their business one day.

Resource: https://collegehunkshaulingjunk.com/about/

5 Comments

Categories : College, Great Ideas, Hunks, Manual labor, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Strong

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

Others Said Nope, but They Brought HoPe

Posted by pjnickoloff

· Monday, September 17th, 2018

· 2 Comments

HoPe, or Hispanic Organization Promoting Education is a nonprofit with the goal of inspiring and equipping Hispanic high school students to not only complete secondary education, but excel beyond exceptions and attain higher education.

This organization was co-founded and currently run by husband and wife, David Araya and Angela Hurtado. These millennial entrepreneurs have quite the story surrounding the development of their dream. Araya was born in Costa Rica, and Hurtado in Colombia. Both of their families immigrated to the U.S. where they ended up at the same high school. However, these two did not get together until their college years. It was during their Sophomore and Freshman years that they sat down in a Wendy’s discussing their high school years and the obstacles they had to overcome to be where they were today. They discussed the prejudice and disadvantages they faced as immigrants and how many of their peers were unable to overcome these conditions. They looked at the lack of opportunity not only in their local community, but in the Hispanic and Latino community in general. It was there and then that a 20 and 19 year old wrote HoPe down on a yellow napkin and decided they were going to spend the rest of theirs life’s attempting to give that to their community.

This organization was officially founded in 2009 in one school, now it currently operates in 33 schools. It is a student-led program, that empowers and enables Hispanic students to pursue and achieve academic success through educational services, programs, and extra curricular activities. The program creates opportunities and communities for kids lacking guidance and support. Currently, the program has a 100% graduation rate for all the students who participate, which is an incredible improvement from when they first started.

These two entrepreneurs not only faced racial discrimination, but age discrimination as well. They weren’t only young when they started this venture, but they looked young too. However, they believe that youth isn’t weakness, but an assest. Araya and Hurtado hold that the youth should be nurtured, inspired and given the opportunity and tools to make a difference in this world. That is why the program is student-led.

Their entire process of building this organization was innovative and driven by entrepreneurial thinking. Mostly, because they had zero experience and the entire process was new to them. They had to think and rework, test and rethink, build and redesign the layout and operation of this organization till they found an effective and plausible solution. It was their determination and ability to identity an under-served population, that made HoPe such a success, and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

2 Comments

Categories : Academia, College, Social Entrepreneur, Social Justice, Women Entrepreneurs

Blair Files

Posted by perrykb1

· Tuesday, November 28th, 2017

· 1 Comment

http://blairfls.wixsite.com/illustrations/about

When we were little – 4 or 5 years old – my cousin Blair and I liked sitting on the rocky coast of Maine with paper and crayons, drawing what we imagined to be grand scenes of the mighty ocean; to anyone else, those pictures looked like a bunch of scribbles. As the years past, my pictures were still just scribbles – I have roughly the same degree of artistic talent as an elephant holding a paint brush in its trunk; Blair was a different story: it quickly became apparent that she had real talent as an illustrator. She loved to draw and she was good at it. Over the years she also picked up talent with paint and sculpture.

Jump forward to when we were a pair of 18-year-olds trying to make one of the biggest choices of our lives: COLLEGE. I was bound for the liberal arts, Blair for the fines arts; we both got our first choice: for me, Grove City College, for Blair, the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. We were all so proud of her: despite the fact that no one in the recorded history of our family had ever done anything as impractical as going to art school, we were blown away by her talent and thrilled that she had been accepted to what is arguably one of the greatest art schools in the world.

So, we both packed our bags and shipped off for school. But while I immediately felt that I had made the right choice, Blair was plagued by doubts: not doubts about her choice to be an artist, but with questions about whether she was ready for this. She decided she wasn’t. After two weeks on campus she realized that she had a lot of personal growing to do and that RISD was not the place to do it – not yet, anyway. Of course, it was all a bit more complicated than that, but for the sake of brevity I won’t go into more detail.

Thus, Blair found herself taking a spontaneous gap year. In all honesty, she had always wanted to take a year off before college, but now that she was doing so, she didn’t have a plan. But these things always seem to work out in the end: she was offered the chance to go to Scotland to work for six months – something else she had always wanted to do. The only problem: travel is expensive!!!

But, undaunted as ever, Blair came up with a solution: she was an artist, and she was going to support herself as such! She had already created a large and impressive portfolio of original pieces, so she launched a website to sell prints of her work to support her trip abroad. She also started working for commission.

Anyway, skipping ahead a little bit: Blair made it to Scotland where she had the incredible opportunity to work for YoungLife Ministries. In her work, she saw the incredible darkness that comes with a life without Jesus Christ: she saw kids who desperately needed Christ, and new that she was called to share Him with them. But it was very well to do so for six months in a youth camp, but what about back in America? She was going to be an artist, not a minister.

Well, like I said, Blair knew that she had a lot of growing to do: and grow she did. While she was in Scotland she had the chance to explore what it meant to use one’s talents for God; she learned that our gifts are not our own, but are to be used in service to the Lord. What did that mean for a 19-year-old who wanted to draw, but who also wanted to do more than illustrate children’s Bibles?

Eventually she found the answer: she decided not to go back to RISD but instead to enroll in the University of Delaware which had a program in Visual Communication – there, she would not only get a degree in fine art, but also in communications and visual media, learning the skills she would need to communicate truth through her art. She recognized that art isn’t just about creating beauty: it’s about creating the kind of beauty that points the viewer to the author of all things beautiful.

Today, Blair is a Junior at University of Delaware, still working to complete her degree. She is also still selling work through her website to help support her studies. Her story as an entrepreneur is still in it’s early chapters: much of it is still unwritten. Thus far, she has had enough success to allow her to fund the studies that we are confident will one day allow her to share the message that we are all called to spread. We don’t know what she will draw, who she will draw for, or what she will say through her art. But we know that she as chosen a profession that is, above all, about communication, and that she has the greatest story of all to communicate. Through her website and commissioned work she has already been able to start reaching people – now all that’s left is to watch her grow!

I like Blair’s story because it serves an in important reminder of the fact that entrepreneurship doesn’t have to mean something huge: sometimes its something as small as selling art to fund travel. Its also important to remember that as Christians we have a higher calling in whatever we do: to serve the Lord. Blair became an entrepreneur because she was a broke almost-college-student who needed to get to Scotland. Once there, she discovered that her true calling really was art, not business. Now, she’s learning what she wants to say with her art and how she wants to say it. Will she one day go into business for herself as an artist/entrepreneur? Who can say: I personally think that art is a form of entrepreneurship…. The important thing is that we serve the Lord in all we do – be it painting scenes of the cross or painting scenes of nature; running a “Christian Business” or running a “Secular business” that operates on Christian principles. I believe that finding ways to serve the Lord in all that we do is the highest calling of any entrepreneur and that turning our work into a way of serving God is in itself an entrepreneurial act.

Blair also reminds us that we don’t necessarily have to “paint the cross” to serve the Lord. I look at the things she creates and see the Master’s hand: whether she is painting the portrait of a child of God or something silly that just popped into her head, I see the kind of true beauty that is precious not because of who created it or what they created, but because it came from the hand of a woman who loves God and who knows who her talent is from and what it is for.

1 Comment

Categories : Art, Beauty, College, Communication, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Websites, Women Entrepreneurs

Koofers

Posted by perrykb1

· Monday, November 27th, 2017

· 1 Comment

In the 21st century, more than ever before, a college education is the single most important step young Americans can take towards securing a prosperous and stable future. Unfortunately, the cost of higher education is going nowhere but up: while many Americans have been saving for their education since birth, very few of us will be able to come up with the nearly $100,000 check needed to see us across the stage. And even if we are able to make up the difference through loans, scholarships, and grants, there is very little aid available to help cover the costs needed for success: many of us may find ourselves working several jobs just to cover the cost of textbooks, study materials, and practice exams, putting us even further away from paying off our debts and cashing in on the security our education promises.

That’s where Koofers comes into play: in 2008, Glynn LoPresti, Patrick Gartlan, and Dan Donahoe – three young professionals with background in Computer Science and Finance – decided enough was enough and set out to find a way to lighten the financial burden of College education. But while others before them had looked at the problem through the lens of tuition and enrollment fees, the founders of Koofers saw an unmet although equally daunting need: the miscellaneous cost of success. It’s all well and good to provide the financial support necessary to get students into college, but what about their needs once they are there? We’re all students, so none of us need to be told about the stress of trying to find the necessary funds to keep ourselves in books and school supplies. It’s really hard to be successful in school if you are working 60 hours a week just to pay for the tools you need to keep you in school!

Koofers provides students with FREE access to those tools. It is a consumer internet platform that provides access to testbanks, practice exams, professor rating data, flashcards, and scheduling software at absolutely no cost to the students who use it. It is funded through textbook sales and commissions from employers looking to hire students so that those who already struggle to make ends meet to cover tuition won’t find themselves struggling to keep their grades up because they can’t afford study tools. It is a free one-stop-shop that offers students the needed resources to not only get them into school, but also to see them through to graduation.

The site also offers an “enterprise Campus Recruiting solution” that connects employers and recruiting firms with students looking for internships and full-time work opportunities. By charging prospective employers for the use of this system, Koofers is able to offer a wide variety of services to students free of charge! The recruiting program also ensures that the students working so hard to put themselves through school don’t see all that effort go to waste: through Koofers, students are not only supported through their schools years, but are also given access to a community of professionals and employers eager to help them put their education to work!

Founded and run by recent college grads, Koofers understands that college acceptance and tuition is just the first step in the uphill financial battle that so many Americans face in trying to procure and education. If tuition is the canoe, then school supplies are the paddle: without one, the other is useless. While federal grant programs, trusts, and loan programs get students on board, only Koofers provides them with the tools they need to navigate their way towards a brighter future!

1 Comment

Categories : Academia, College, Content Entrepreneurs, Education, Online Companies, Services, Social Entrepreneur

From College Thoughts, To a Whole New World.

Posted by woullardcc1

· Tuesday, November 14th, 2017

· 1 Comment

Mark Zuckerberg is the inventor of Facebook. Facebook is a social media platform used by over a billion people each day. People use the site to post statuses, pictures, links, and anything else they want. It can also be used for instant messaging other users, playing different games that are on the site, and for shopping. People make group pages where others can post items they want to sell, and now there is even a tab called “The Marketplace” where people post items for sale. Users shop the Marketplace, and the items that are shown are based on a certain mile radius from the shopper’s location. It makes buying and selling easier than sites like eBay because the items are close and easier to access. Mark Zuckerberg never dreamed Facebook would turn into what it has today. He originally started the idea for the website at Harvard University with his college roommates. It was intended to be a site for the university so people could search others who go to their school, find out who are in their major or classes, and, of course, make friends. After it took off at Harvard, it was opened up for use at other Ivy League schools. It continued to flourish until it expanded throughout the country and, eventually, the world. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, and all of its ability has made a huge impact on the world. It gave people an entirely new way to communicate. People can communicate with people across the world, which was hard to do before because international calling and texting was difficult and expensive. It is available in about one hundred languages, which also helped to connect the world. People can connect and share pictures with all of their friends and family at once rather than having to send it to each individual person. It makes disclosing news faster and easier. Facebook definitely impacted the world and makes it feel a lot smaller since it is so easy to connect with others. Another trait that makes Facebook so influential is that it is constantly changing and being made better. The Facebook massages now have the capability to make phone and video calls to others on the site. Everything the user needs is accessible all within one site rather than having to use multiple apps and websites to send texts, make phone calls, and make video calls. Mark Zuckerberg is still heavily involved in his company and continues to strive to make it better. He is a true entrepreneur who is invested in, and is passionate about what he created and intended it to be.

1 Comment

Categories : App, College

Garrett Gee: Lucky Hunch

Posted by hodilrh17

· Sunday, November 5th, 2017

· 1 Comment

Just before the Ipad 2 came out, a young university student named Garrett Gee had the hunch that there would be blog posts all over the web listing the top 10 apps for the new device. Garrett then came up with the idea that there should be much easier QR code software and apps to use with the new device. Because Garrett felt that he was on to something, he go to work immediately.Had to act quickly to be the first to implement his idea. After quickly getting an Ipad 2 into the hands of his ios developer, Garrett spent two sleepless nights developing his service before it was completed. He named his app Scan and recruited two fellow classmates to help develop the service further and it was finally launched in February of 2011. In the first year, Scan earned over 10 million downloads and made over 1.5 million dollars from venture capitalists such as Google Ventures.

In class we have talked about how many ideas originally stem from a lucky hunch like Garrett’s. When a hunch is taken seriously, it can lead to big ideas and successful accomplishments like the scan application. Hunches are able to develop by clashing with other people’s ideas and hunches. After getting the input of his two fellow classmates, Garrett’s hunch was improved and transformed into the extremely successful idea of Scan.

1 Comment

Categories : App, College, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Millennial Entrepreneurs, Smartphone