In the big bad world of college searching and funding every student will ask the question “how much?” This question almost always refers to both how much it actually is to go to a school and how much scholarship said school will allot them. However, most students do not know about outside-of-school funding, whether it be state or private funding. The reason being is because of the hassle of the applications for said other scholarships and thus students leave a great asset and well of wealth to the wayside. But now there is a brilliant App/Website designed by a student to help students with their funding needs. Scholly is the brilliant and much needed brainchild of Christopher Gray. Being a low-income student himself, Gray searched for months during his latter years of high school applying for various scholarships until he had racked up enough cash to cover all college fees and then some. The process he went through however, was not an easy one nor a quick one. Thus, Scholly was born. Designed to easily connect students to private scholarships, Gray and his co-founders Nick Pirollo and Bryson Alief came up with an 8 parameter algorithm for easy scholarship connections. Even though it is practically a brand new company, Scholly has helped give out over $20,000,000 to 600,000 users since early 2015. From Chris Gray and me to my fellow broke classmates who are required to write comments; you’re welcome. 
Archive for Great Ideas – Page 15
There is an online platform that many individuals, particularly millennials, enjoy. Well, often it’s a procrastination mechanism, at least it is for me. Pinterest allows you to save links to various sites including (but not limited to) retail sites and blogs. “Pins”, as they are called, are categorized and browse-able. With one simple click on the image, your computer, tablet or smartphone immediately links to the site from which the picture was pinned. This allows a user to collect and share others ideas, styles, thoughts, quotes, travels and just about anything you could think to take a snap shot of. I have certainly found myself spending a lot of time on this virtual creativity board.
Ben Silberman, born in 1982, co-founded the virtual pin-board known as Pinterest. Silberman is an internet entrepreneur and acts as the CEO of Pinterest. Silberman is quite the accomplished man. He participated in a prestigious high school research program at MIT, and he later graduated from Yale with his undergraduate degree. Silberman worked at Google in the online advertising group, until he started creating his own apps. Silberman said he thought of Pinterest because he has always liked to collect things. Now, with Pinterest, we can all collect ideas!
In March of 2009, Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra founded Pinterest, a catalog of ideas and inspiration. Originally, no one understood the concept but one day, after a program called “Pin It Forward” was started, users suddenly began to realize what they could do with such a powerful interface as Pinterest. Since then, Pinterest became so popular that it had 17 million users in 2012, compared to the 5,000 users it started with. It has since grown beyond expectations and is used in thirty languages around the world.
Today, Pinterest is global site that is used for everything from recipes, to clothing inspiration, to home improvements, or even funny pet videos. Although it may seem counterintuitive, they hope to inspire users with their mission and encourage them to get out and do things. Although Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra may have felt as though they did not know what they were doing as they were designing Pinterest, they have created an international phenomenon that remains fruitful and popular today.
https://vimeo.com/145559444
Watering plants, dry cleaning, shoe repair, furniture assembly, stocking the fridge, dog care, prescriptions, gluten-free snacks, home cleaning, dishes, gift shopping and returns.
These and many more are some of the weekly tasks nearly every individual living on his or her own is responsible for. These things take time. Time that for those who have families and busy work schedules wish they had free to spend with their kids or friends to relax or go to the gym or to get more pressing things done.
29 year old Marcela Sapone and her co-founder Jessica Beck, Harvard Business School grads, realized this when they first hired someone to come to their apartment weekly to take care of those mundane tasks that take up so much time. Then they turned it into a business called Hello Alfred.
Hello Alfred is an app that matches you with a carefully vetted personal butler who visits your home each week to handle the tasks you don’t want to do for just $32 a week (or $58 to visit 2x a week).
Testimonials:
A.J. & Christina C. are Legal Professionals
“There is a sense of peace and calm when you walk into your home and everything is put away. Having your groceries already in the fridge is incredible. No other service does it this way.”
Their Alfred list: Returns, Home Cleaning, Dry Cleaning
James M. career is Real Estate Finance
“I’ve used Alfred for a year. It’s freed up my weekends. Rather than spending Saturday running errands, I go to brunch with friends, sleep in, or go to the gym.”
His Alfred List: Dry Cleaning, gift shopping, home cleaning
In the age of needing products right away, amazon is leading the pack in online shopping and quick service. The new product they just released is called “Amazon Dash”. This product allows you to pair it to your existing amazon prime account and be able to order things literally at the press of a button. For example. Lets say you’re in the bathroom, and to your absolute horror, there is no more toilet paper. All you need is the amazon dash. Just push the button on the device labeled “toilet paper” and 2 days later, it’ll be at your door! This product takes the concept of a “one click purchase” to a whole new level. Its easy and convenient.
Deepak Ravindran, the co-founder of “Innov”, has created the offline Google for the billions of “dumb-phone” users around the world. Innov is an automated artificial intelligence that receives SMS (text messages) from subscribed users and then replies via text message with the information asked for.
Innov plugs the gap for people who have phones, but have no internet access. Deepak created Innov with the dream of giving people access to information in a simple and affordable way. In developing Innov Deepak said, ” We don’t want to be another Internet company competing with Android, or any other OS. We just want to provide a solution for all of us to bring the Internet to the people that don’t have it.”
Innov offers an affordable monthly subscription plan of 30 rupees per month, which is less than one US dollar. This plan offers dumb-phone users full access to the offline web. Deepak launched Innov in India, however today they are operating in seven different countries. “More than 120 million users have tried the service around the world so far,” says Deepak. “We’re focusing on developing nations – we want to be the Google for the developing world.”
Deepak’s innovation and goals as an entrepreneur are inspiring. He saw a problem, people having cell phones with no internet access, and found a simple yet innovative way to solve the problem. Not only has his business been successful, but it has brought about social change for good, bringing information to groups of people who before have no access to the internet.
Co-founded in 2010, Pinterest is a relatively new company that revolutionized the discovery aspect of social media. With 176 million registered users, it’s clear that millennial founders Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra (aka Cold Brew Labs) had a stellar idea in the concept of Pinterest.
Pinterest is a visually-driven website that allows users to collect and sort ideas, articles, pictures, and other inspirations. Every “pin” is a photo, and if you like what you see, you can double click to see the pin’s origin or click the repin button to save it to one of your boards. It’s like a virtual scrapbook or file folder- but beautifully designed and much simpler. Additionally, users can add their own content to the site to share their own ideas and work.
This wildly successful site was the phoenix that rose out of the founder’s previous app failure, Tote. Part of the reason Tote failed was people hadn’t really begun shopping through apps yet; the main way people used the app was to send product images to themselves. They were image collecting. The recognition of this behavioral trend was the key for Cold Brew Labs’ next innovation. They took this new insight and transferred it over to the web to avoid one of the big potholes Tote had, and voila, Pinterest was born. Its monstrous success is a testament to what can happen when failure is looked at as a learning experience rather than defeat.
Although some have call Pinterest’s CEO somewhat “socially awkward,” it’s clear that his creation is a work of social genius.
[Read more about Pinterest’s origins on Business Insider!]
Private space exploration technology corporations are rising fast and are getting closer to commercializing space flight. SpaceX, currently the most successful company in the field, is an American manufacturer with the highest ambitions. They have plans for helping the human race in colonizing the solar system. There first crazy objective is to safely transport humans to mars in hopes of colonization.
SpaceX was founded in June of 2002 by the same entrepreneur who founded Tesla and PayPal, Elon Musk.
On April 8th 2016 the falcon 9 successfully launched and landed. This was a huge step in the right direction, successfully landing with propulsion methods will prove useful for landing on any and all sorts of surfaces within the solar system. A new age of space exploration is almost in reach.
See Musk’s plans in more detail here
Meet Benjamin Stern. At the ripe old age of 17, this kid made a deal with Shark Tank Judge Mark Cuban for 25% of his company for $100,000. Crazy right? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Then I looked into this miraculous product he thought up and developed and understood why. Ben’s product, the Nohbo, is a ball of dried shampoo that when run under water can be rubbed between your hands to produce a rich shampoo. This ingenious style of shampoo produces the perfect amount of soap for you while at the same time cutting down on plastic waste, which is the main goal of this company. These travel friendly spheres are perfect for any excursion you undertake. Just take however many you need for however many days and you’ll be good to go! Because of their small design and liquid free formula they will prevent spills and wont take up tons of space in your bag. However Ben’s products aren’t just limited to shampoo. He has also produced conditioner, body-wash, and shaving cream. Robert Herjavec of Shark Tank also commented “This could be the most successful product I’ve ever been presented with on Shark Tank.” Stern is continuing to be innovative in his product ideas as well as with his upkeep on Nohbo. He says his “…growing passion is to help the environment…” and we can’t wait to see what he’ll come up with next.
Go check out his awesome product in the video below:
Another drop out become successful entrepreneur. Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of her sophomore year at Stanford to pursue her entrepreneurial dream. She dropped out as a chemical engineering major to create a blood diagnosing startup. The problem of correctly diagnosing was the problem that Elizabeth noticed. Too many people were either having to wait hours for expensive testing to get done at hospitals or they were incorrectly diagnosing themselves online. The company, Theranos, created a mini blood testing lab that is the size of a microwave. It is portable and does a majority of the tests that usually takes a large lab to do, with only small samples of blood. This method gets results faster and at a fraction of the price. With this, the company even innovated the finger prick device into something that requires less blood and gives a more accurate result. not only this, but all the devices are being produced in the USA to create American jobs.
If you have ever watched an Episode of Grey’s Anatomy, there will usually be someone complaining about labs taking too long or patients freaking out about the cost of taking too many tests. This product innovates the entire lab process into one device. It is like a computer that blood is an input, and it condenses all the tests into one place. My opinion is that they are focused on creating a cheaper method, so why aren’t the producing in the cheapest way possible, overseas? What are your thoughts on this?