Adam Lyons helped co-found The Zebra along with Joshua Dziabiak in 2012. The Zebra is an insurance comparison site that compares rates from over 200 different insurance carriers. He helped co-found this multi-billion dollar company while living in his friends basement collecting unemployment in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. After making a fortune while being the CEO of The Zebra, he left the company in 2018 to pursue a career in reality TV development. What I think is exemplary about this entrepreneur is that he went from rock bottom, dropping out of high school and living off of unemployment checks in a friends basement to a founder of a successful business and a billionaire in around 6 years time.
Archive for Convenience
Brian Chesky and a Joe Gebbia founded Airbnb in 2008. They got the idea when there was a conference in town that completely booked all the nearby hotels. They decided to take advantage of the circumstances and rent out air mattresses and space in their apartment to those who couldn’t find a hotel to make enough money to pay rent, this is where they got the name Air bed and Breakfast. After their success, they decided to create a website that offered their apartment as an alternative to those that couldn’t book a hotel during the large conferences that were held in San Francisco. After launching their website, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia traveled around the US to meet with users and promote their business to potential investors, it didn’t take long for them to see success. Just one year later they had around 3,000 listings and only a few years after that, they also started to offer their services in foreign countries. Now in 2022 Airbnb is a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of listing across the world.
These two entrepreneurs innovated the house rental industry by appealing to renters and being on average a cheaper option than hotels, Airbnb is also starting to beat hotels in the hospitality sector as well. Back in 2008 they even made $30,000 selling presidential candidate themed cereal at conventions during the elections.
City Bonfires was created and is still produced in Maryland. It was created by Chris McCasland and Michael Opalski when both of their jobs were impacted because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of this, they were both at home a lot more than they were used to and started looking for something to do with all of this time they had recently acquired. I think that it is really great that they make everything right in Maryland and with American made materials.
City Bonfires sells several different product packages on their website. They sell just the “portable firepit”, three different smore packs (which include smore ingredients since these are safe to cook over, and scented ones which interestingly you can also still cook over. I think this is a very interesting concept and something that has been missing on the market. Yes there have been other little fire makers out there, but none that are made out of food grade wax and plant based materials that makes them perfectly safe to cook things like smores over.
I really like the idea and execution of City Bonfires. I believe that with innovation cool niche products like this can really make a go of it. There is nothing quite as perfect and well thought out as this product on the market. I think it is very fun that this whole company came from the pandemic.
Your Super is a health based company that aims to promote healthier eating by providing essential vitamins and supplements into their products in a quick in easy to use manner. Your super was created by a young couple who each have a unique story to tell. Michael, the husband, relates his story to his days as a professional tennis player as well as dealing with cancer at a young age of 24. Through his journey will illness, Michael found that food is truly the “fuel” for your body. This clarifies the phrase, “You are what you eat”, and he found this to be very evident in his life.
Kristel, Michael’s wife and co-founder of the company, would share her unique, homemade powders with him. He found that these supplements and powders made him feel happier, more energized, and healthier all together. The effects and impact of a healthy diet became even more evident in Michael’s athletics as well as his daily life all together. because of this. Michael then hopes to share the importance of good nutrition, by selling and promoting Your Super.
Kristel, Michael’s wife, was another important aspect of the company. Having actually met Michael while on the court, she herself has a profession in tennis as well. She found at a young age, that superfoods are essential to a healthy curing lifestyle. From flaxseeds, wheatgrass, chia seeds, maca, spirulina, and many others, these nutrients are just what the body needs. She wanted a quick and easy way for people to incorporate these nutrients into their everyday lives. So they created mixes and powders containing these nutrients in which people can blend into smoothies, add to their meals, make into a latte, or even just mix simply with water.
They stand by the phrase, “Small changes can make all the difference”, and it was very evident in their lives!
Langston Whitlock is an 18-year-old Atlanta-native, Georgia State University freshman, longtime coder, drummer, son, and brother. Also, he is cofounder and chief information officer (CIO) of the multi-million dollar company, SafeTrip, which provides ridesharing services for the homeless and elderly in the Atlanta, Georgia area who are in need of reliable transportation to medical appointments and wheelchair compatibility. It all started when Whitlock and Ja’Nese Jean, opera singer, social entrepreneur, philanthropist, and now SafetTrip’s CEO, who had been friendly colleagues in Atlanta for several years, were attending a local event and discovered the problem they would soon solve with SafeTrip. As they were at the community outreach event, Whitlock told Jean that he had heard from a local homeless veteran that many people in the area were unable to make it to important medical appointments due to lack of transportation. Jean replied by asking “Can you make an app for that?”
Whitlock learned how to write code as a young 12-year-old when he created an anonymous messaging app to try and contact his father; at 16 he became the youngest person to be recognized by Forbes Enterprise Technology judges and CIO for the company, meaning he oversees the development team and helps implement sourcing data and new technologies, such as users being able to pay for rides by debit, credit, or insurance. Though everyone else who works for the company is older than him, he says this is no issue at all and it works well; if anything, he says, “They love me cause I’m a kid, I guess.” Additionally, his perspective as a young person has proven valuable: SafeTrip recruits new high school graduates to be drivers for the company in order to further community-connectedness and to help teens who may not have a clear path ahead of them; also, these kids have just recently learned things like defensive driving and CPR at school, so these skills are fresh in their minds.
The app itself launched in 2018 and in 2019 made $3.4 million in revenue; also, it currently has $2 million in funding. Their motivation, besides wanting to better their community and help those in need, is also rooted in that the Atlanta-based company wants to show that the Atlanta technology scene is just as impressive and valuable as Silicon Valley. Additionally, Whitlock is personally committed to providing for his mother and bringing her all the happiness in the world, as a way of repaying her for the work she has put in throughout his life.
Overall, Langston Whitlock is a great example of a young entrepreneur in the 21st century. He and his cofounder saw a problem in their community and, using their existing skillsets and resources as active community members, and building on the typical idea of ridesharing went out and solved a real problem for the greater good.
Matthew Mullenweg grew up with hobbies like coding, art and economics. A fun mix. One of the main founders of WordPress, his hobbies and skills throughout his life led to many amazing web related ideas. In 2005 Matt left school at Houston and a consulting job to start his overhead business, Automattic. This later led to a slew of other companies that used Automattic as a launch pad, including WordPress. He was just nineteen when he decided to change the way people use the internet to publish.
Automattic and all of its resulting companies has turned into a completely virtual company of over 1,100 employees in more than 62 countries.
WordPress, which is used by many authors and writers to publish blogs, was started because of the closure of b2, the only other open source platform option at the time. Having used b2 throughout his life, its end was a pain for Matt. The idea and plan for WordPress started when Matt was approached online by a fellow coder after he had talked about the lack of a publishing space.
Using b2 as a starting base and template, the two entrepreneurs proceeded to build upon the main idea while improving any faults. A classic mash up of ideas and innovation, WordPress is now used by over 31 percent of the web. It is only one of many successes Matt made for himself, but it very much added to the open source world of the web.
He works on it constantly and takes joy from the benefit people receive.
From educational to professional, WordPress has added levels of simplicity, convenience, and efficiency to the way people work. Matt has an entrepreneur’s spirit, and from his career history so far, it is easy to see he looks for problems to solve and thrives in finding solutions.
Stitch Fix is an online styling service for women who are busy or need a change in their wardrobe. Each customer takes a style quiz and is assigned a personal stylist. The stylist picks out five personalize items that the customer would want to wear and sends them to the customer. There Is a $20 styling fee with every box to cover the stylists’ expertise and time. After trying on every product, the customer can return them for free or use the $20 dollars towards the clothes they want to purchase.
Stitch Fix was founded in 2011 by Katrina Lake. She started the company after her sister was her personal stylist and knew there was a market for women who needed or wanted fashion advice. She was attending Harvard when she shipped the first Stitch Fix box. When she first founded the company, they were only helping women but realized there was also a market for men. In 2016, they launched personalized boxes for men and offered plus sizes in 2017. As of 2020, they style men, women and children.
Stitch Fix’s mission as a company is to “change the way people find clothes they love by combining technology with the personal touch of seasoned style experts”. They take pride in knowing that each box is personalized for each client and that the personalized items can help them build their style. Lake’s goal when founding Stitch Fix was to help women discover their style and feel confident in what they wear.
Since Stitch Fix started, their sales have only gone up, making the company well-known and successful. They have over 2 million customers in the United States alone. Their sales and number of customers have gone up since the beginning of the pandemic. Their sales went from $370.3 million, a year ago, to $451.8 million in the second fiscal 2020, ending February 1st. Many people have been turning to stitch fix for fashi
on styles and clothing pieces during the pandemic, instead of going to stores.
Sometimes it is difficult to find rooms at hotels. It can be even more difficult to find cheap rooms that are still up to your standards. Brian Chesky saw this as a problem and did something about it. Chesky grew up playing hockey and lifting, however, he always had a love for art and design. While he attended the Rhode Island School of Design, he met Joe Gebbia who shared this same concern. After working some design jobs they moved to San Francisco, but they eventually ran out of cash and needed to do something about it. In October 2007 there was a design conference where the hotels in the area ran out of rooms. Gebbia and Chesky had the idea to rent out their space to those who had nowhere to stay. This is where Airbnb comes to fruition. They began to run with this idea while being joined by an engineer friend Nathan Blecharczyk. Since then the service has blown up and is offered in more than 191 countries worldwide. The company is now valued at $15 billion.
What I think is most cool about this idea is how unique and simple it is. They made an app that allows for people to rent out spaces they own. It is a wonderful idea and super cheap for them. Airbnb has no product, they just use the spaces people offer up for others to rent out for short or long term. This idea really gets me thinking that entrepreneurship does not have to be selling a physical product or making an invention, it can just be an idea that uses what is around you to make the lives of customers so much easier and potentially more comfortable.
How it all began
Back in 2012, the owners of a small macaroon store were challenged with a problem that many small business owners face daily. They had many delivery orders to fulfill, but had no delivery drivers to meet the demand. To ensure that this problem was real, they surveyed 200 other restaurants in the area and came to the conclusion that most restaurant owners feel that deliveries are frustrating. They needed a way to find delivery drivers on demand when an order came about. This is what drove Tony Xu to create DoorDash, one of the most popular delivery apps on the market today.
What makes DoorDash stand out?
Before the creation of DoorDash, restaurants were obligated to hire their own delivery drivers as employees of the company. This was a challenge for many companies, because often times there weren’t enough available employees to meet the delivery demand. DoorDash wanted to solve this issue, and create a way for delivery drivers to be available at all times of the day. This app allows delivery drivers to be on demand, and deliver for any restaurant rather than only working for one. Tony Xu used entrepreneurial traits such as looking at other successful companies, and learning how to implement their strategy into his own. He looked at the success of FedEx, and wanted to model his business in a similar on way.
DoorDash Innovation
Tony Xu began experimenting with this delivery process in a company called Palo Alto Delivery. This company was the same as DoorDash today, but on a much smaller scale. It focused on a very small market around the Stanford University area. After months of success on a small scale, the owners knew it was time to allow restaurants all over the country to start using the app. The delivery app slowly implemented its availability to different parts of the country, offering the service initially to urban areas with a higher delivery demand. With the continued success, most citizens in the United States today have access to DoorDash’s services, including those in rural areas.
My takeaway from DoorDash
The story of DoorDash has taught me that many problems in the world are shared within a majority of people, and can be solved through entrepreneurship. The problem in a small macaroon shop with delivery demand was a very common issue among other restaurants. All it took was one person to act on this issue and create a solution that benefited many businesses within the country. This story also inspired and taught me that entrepreneurship can open up doors in other innovative areas that weren’t originally intended. For example, the creation of DoorDash was originally intended to solve an issue for food delivery restaurants. As a result, many other restaurants that hadn’t used delivery prior such as Mcdonald’s and other fast food now use DoorDash to deliver food and create a larger market. I am excited to see other innovations that DoorDash will implement into their service, and see how the delivery market shifts through time.
Sofia Overton has wanted to be on Shark Tank since she was six. With a mind primed for innovation, it did not take her long to find her niche. An observer by nature, in 2017 Sofia noticed her older cousin struggling to store her phone in her pocket-less leggings. Sofia watched her cousin put the phone in her boot, so she tried it but found it too uncomfortable.
That is what started her entrepreneurial career. She designed a prototype sock with a pocket to hold her phone. It worked great and Wise Pockets was born. Through crowdfunding, Sofia was able to raise enough money for manufacturing. Crowdfunding can be a hit or miss risk, but for her it was a resounding success.
It worked so well that she expanded to leggings with pockets designed for carrying phones. It worked so well in fact, she earned spotlight attention and made it to Shark Tank in summer of 2020, scoring two investors.
Her self-confidence has set Sofia up for success and she is not afraid to look for new angles; she inspires with her ability to find problems with daily life and come up with a way to solve them.
Another important aspect of entrepreneurship, Sofia has a kind philanthropic heart. Impacted by the rate of homelessness at her school, she determined for every pair of socks sold one would be given to a child in need.
She said, “We are Generation Z kids who want their purchases to make a difference.” Sofia Overton is heading the wave of teenagers striving to make the world a better place. Both with purchasing, and with the opportunities they can offer the world by opening up their mind and not being afraid to use their gifts. Sofia shows us the mindset of the Gen Z.