Archive for Databases

Aaron Levie – CoFounder of Box

Posted by logan wick

· Sunday, October 11th, 2020

· No Comments

Aaron Levie is the Cofounder of Box which is a storing process for companies to file their documents and files digitally. He created this business in college and decided to focus on it totally by taking a leave of absence in his junior year. His business is really interesting because he found a part of the market that hadn’t been explored yet and made a very lucrative business out of it. He is a typical entrepreneur and is able to innovate and pivot as he’s going.

Box CEO Aaron Levie on How to Be a Great Mentor | Inc.com

Aaron and his partner decided to shift Box from a consumer service to one focused on business sales. They also expanded their business to include Europe and they were able to target businesses in a different market. Aaron inspires me because he was a college student just as I am and he was able to create a very profitable company, and seeing him succeed makes me think hat I could succeed in the future. I have learned how to take an idea and embrace it by creating a business from it.

Box CEO Aaron Levie says thrifty founders have more control

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Categories : Databases

Jon Wheatley

Posted by John Proctor

· Thursday, December 12th, 2019

· 2 Comments

Jon Wheatley is the creator of DailyBooth, a blogging site that allows users to share pictures, videos, and posts about their daily lives. He was able to raise around $8 million to create the highly successful site. Due to the success of the website, his net worth went up to $1 million and Wheatley is now able to focus on more ventures and projects

Cites:

https://www.lifehack.org/588440/16-young-and-successful-entrepreneurs-who-prove-that-age-is-nothing-but-a-number

https://www.bing.com/search?q=jon-paul%20wheatley%20bio&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=jon-paul%20wheatley%20bio&sc=2-21&sk=&cvid=967375C5C0A246A98691EDF59468FA1D

2 Comments

Categories : App, Communication, Databases, Online Companies, Technology

Catherine Cook

Posted by John Proctor

· Wednesday, December 11th, 2019

· 1 Comment

Catherine Cook is the Founder of MyYearBook.com which focused on putting high school year books online instead of having hard copies. She founded the company with her brother Dave Cook when she was 15, and with the help of her eldest brother Geoff Cook as the main investor, they were able to launch.

Catherine’s reasoning for creating the website was that she had just moved to Skillman NJ and started school with no friends. She looked through the year books to see if there was anyone that she knew and then had the thought why not put all this information online for easy access to all. After asking the help of her brother Geoff and Dave, she was able to put the website together and it was an instant success

Cites:

https://www.lifehack.org/588440/16-young-and-successful-entrepreneurs-who-prove-that-age-is-nothing-but-a-number

https://www.inc.com/magazine/201205/liz-welch/catherine-cook-and-geoff-cook-myyearbook.html

1 Comment

Categories : App, Communication, Convenience, Databases, Education, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Online Companies

Piper: The new way to code!

Posted by kinneywa17

· Wednesday, December 12th, 2018

· 6 Comments

I remember when I was about 13 or 14 years old, I found an interest in coding. That is writing code on a computer for software development. However, I ran into a major issue. There weren’t many options for me to learn how to do anything spectacular. I constantly became upset because the YouTube videos I was watching did nothing for me. That is why Mark Pavlyukovskyy age 27 created Piper. “Piper is a kit that helps kids learn about coding and electronics by coding their own computer.” Forbes

This kit is able to be bought on Amazon for a fair price. It helps students to learn how to code with a hands on activity kit. This way the students stay engaged with what they are learning and they are able to put what they learn to use. The company has generated over $3 million on Amazon alone, and growing fast!

Built by kids from the inside-out

6 Comments

Categories : App, Business, Construction, Creating, Databases, Education, Engineering, Great Ideas, Kids, Robotics, Software, Technology, Toys

“Get Your Textbooks Here!”: A new way to approach those burdensome costs

Posted by GustafsonTE1

· Monday, October 22nd, 2018

· 4 Comments

Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis Perlego

Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis are two rising entrepreneurial stars in the world of college textbooks. Often, students are looking to buy used textbooks at reasonable prices, and, just as often, students cannot find used books at reasonable prices. Many have attempted to solve this problem, few have succeeded. Van Maderen and Davis, however, have managed to develop a profitable company off of this problem.

Their company is called Perlego. Van Malderen and Davis both already had entrepreneurial experience, prior to their team-up. Perlego can be likened to Netflix and Spotify, but rather than movies and music, Perlego is an online platform for buying, storing, and reading educational e-books. In order to bring in revenue, Van Malderen and Davis charge a monthly subscription fee, similar to Netflix and Spotify. Their company has already grown to twelve members, and their site has already amassed works from over 1,000 publishers.

Van Malderen and Davis have shown incredible insight into how this generation is so tech-dependent. With that in mind, their idea heavily relevant to this generation. So often, people have been transitioning businesses to online platforms. As college students know, textbooks are a burdensome expense without many cheap, online options. Perlego addresses that gap in the textbook market by offering a solution that makes obtaining multiple textbooks for a low-cost, easy.

I am inspired by this innovation because it is very applicable to my own life-experience. As a college student, books are burdensome, and this solution is very practical. There is a misconception that entrepreneurs have to have a break-through, unheard-of idea. This is not necessarily break-through nor unheard-of. Van Malderen and Davis took what they were experiencing and found a practical, not too far-fetched solution. Their intuition is inspiring and has prompted me to look into my surroundings for practical solutions.

Link to article: https://startups.co.uk/young-entrepreneurs-gauthier-van-malderen-matthew-davis/

4 Comments

Categories : Business, College, Databases, Millennial Enrepreneuers

Tags : Innovation

Military to Millionaire

Posted by Eric Dudgeon

· Monday, October 15th, 2018

· 4 Comments

Alex Becker, a serial entrepreneur who has generated tens of millions throughout his career, began in the air force at the age of 19. He served for four years and got out when he was 23. The way he puts it, “I became an entrepreneur because I truly did not have any other option.” His desire to generate wealth superseded the status quo of working a 9-5 job, which is the path that many veterans pursued after returning home. Becker went on to create Spekter Labs, which deals with human enhancement and Market Hero, which helps businesses grow through streamlined data. He has also gone on to write several best selling books and training programs. Alex is currently running his own YouTube channel, Instagram page, and Facebook account to help boost his personal brand. He is only 30 years old, but has made a name for himself in business and social media by directing his “never give up” mentality that he used in the military into his career and passion.

4 Comments

Categories : Business, Content Entrepreneurs, Creating, Databases, eCommerce, Military, Millennial Entrepreneurs, Online Companies, Social Media, Software, Technology, YouTube

Veterati

Posted by ReynoldsAL17

· Wednesday, October 10th, 2018

· 1 Comment

Veterati

is a technological platform designed to provide America’s 1.5 million transitioning veterans as the attempt to enter the civilian workforce. It also targets the 5.5 million underemployed military spouses navigate careers in the civilian world.

Beginnings

The idea came from Daniel Rau, however it was in a very elementary phase. When Daniel reached out to Diana who helped develop the idea to its current state.

The Problem and Solution

80% of jobs are not listed, they are instead they are filled by communication in personal networks. This typically leaves those who served in the military out of the loop so to speak. So husband and wife Daniel and Diana created a social network using algorithms to pair former military and their spouses with successful business people in their area, provide mentors, and help build networks vital to furthering careers. This solution is unique and solves a serious social injustice.

Success

Veterati has become the leading Veteran Service Organization to deliver free on-demand mentoring to the military community. The Raus have made it to Forbes’ “30 under 30” list and are continuing to succeed as they currently have 10,000 members and continue to grow. Their is still a large population of military service members looking to transition to civilian careers who aren’t using Veterati yet who could take advantage of this program in the future.

Personal Opinion

This company is making strides in the world of social entrepreneurship. The Raus identified a problem, and solved it in a convenient way that simultaneously adds value to the world. In my opinion, this is a win-win-win. I see the potential for this start up and it reminds me of a military version of LinkedIn. I am also a fan of the fact that this start up led to Daniel and Diana getting married, it’s a super adorable inspiration.

1 Comment

Categories : Databases, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Social Entrepreneur, Social Justice, Social Media

Box

Posted by beidelmanra1

· Monday, October 8th, 2018

· 1 Comment

Maybe Aaron Levie’s story will inspire us in ENTR 101 to take the elevator pitch business ideas to the next level. During Aaron’s time at USC he was assigned a project to come up with a business idea. Taking this project he examined cloud storage options and after putting in the extra effort and contacting organizations on how they were storing their data and content, Levie came up with an idea.

He saw that the cloud storage market was fragmented. He saw an opportunity and built an online file storage business as a tool for businesses and individuals to access and store documents and files. After his fall semester junior year, Levie took a leave of absence to launch Box.

At Box’s beginning stage, it was a cloud that companies and individuals could pay to store their their files in the cloud. Being bold, Levie secured an angel investment from Mark Cuban himself after sending a cold e-mail to the billionaire. In 2007, Levie and high school friend and now CFO Dylan Smith, pivoted the business to focus on selling to businesses. By 2012 their cloud had spread to Europe, opening an office in London.

By 2014, this college business idea was being used by 40% of the Fortune 500 companies. Inspiration to the immense potential of a forced business idea project to a globally used and known company.

1 Comment

Categories : Databases, Services

High School Philanthropy – Jack Kim, Benelab

Posted by kettingerjw17@gcc.edu

· Thursday, September 28th, 2017

· 4 Comments

Entrepreneurial development: At this point, Jack is in his early twenties and has used his skills in creating computer software to create a number of successful online programs. The first of these which was profitable for him came at the age of 14: he called it Twigoogle, a search engine specifically targeting fans of the well-known Twilight series which made money through advertising. More notably however, was his development of a program know as Benelab a few years later at the age of seventeen. Benelab focused on the problem of the inaccessibility or lack of ease of philanthropy in modern day life. This software sought to solve this problem. Benelab is a search engine which generates donations from online traffic. Anyone who uses the search engine is therefore being philanthropic because all of the revenue generated from people using it goes directly to charity.

Among Kim’s most notable characteristics is his ambition: he started off his Benelab project with a budget of only $1,500 dollars and a goal of raising $100,000. He was also unique in his implementation of his adult policy- stating that only kids could work on the program along with him. He started off with a number of failed search engines, and eventually he refined his craft and was successful. I respect greatly the fact that someone so young can be focused on philanthropy as well. It was a successful idea because many people would like to be philanthropic, but often wont go out of their way. With this solution, people can conveniently be so without any money coming out of their pockets, they lose only the convenience of using a different search engine. Jack has really shown the importance of finding a niche in which you work best and enjoy working, and one in which there exists room for continued innovation- Jack has since founded a number of similar programs whether for profit or charity. He is also insightful in his revelations that,all he is doing is putting a bunch of small parts [or ideas] together to make one big product nothing is from scratch He goes on to say that this is no different from any other product in the world, even a search engine is the result of a number of small parts coming together to create a whole.

Here is a link to the video where Jack gives a Ted Talk on his discovery of what he calls the incredible world of entrepreneurship – https://youtu.be/r1L91sVbN64

4 Comments

Categories : Databases, Great Ideas, Websites