Archive for Great Ideas – Page 17

Man Can

The possibility of making money off little ideas seems so unlikely, however we hear the story time and time again about how here are children out there making thousands or millions a year just off of a little idea. Maybe it is because they aren’t as scared to fail, because they don’t need the money to provide for their families. Something about these stories is surprising, and also uplifting.

Fourteen year old Hart Main had an idea when he was teasing his sister about her fundraiser and selling “girly scented candles.” He wanted to make manly scented candles. With an initial investment of 300 dollars his dream started to become a reality. Soon he has scents such as Campfire, Grandpa’s Pipe, and Sawdust. These are now in at least 60 stores and have sold over 9000 units. He made this come true with just 300 dollars.

Kids who had lemonade stands when they were young had a mission, to make money. Adults who have a job, for the most part, have a mission, to make money. Sometimes all you need is to handle is the risk. Just like Hart, he just did it.

Daniel Fine

With many entrepreneurs arising it is getting harder to differentiate. Many of them seem to be pushing the technology side of things with social media and new apps. Some however want to take a different approach. Daniel Fine is a millennial entrepreneur who was named one of the World’s Top Five Entrepreneurs, and one of TIME Magazine’s Top 25 International Leaders of Tomorrow. This man has also done amazing things in the medical realm. He has also won two volunteer-service awards from George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

His little brother was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes and this influenced him to help all who are in need who have type 1 diabetes.  This led him to create an app that is to launch soon. The app is called Dosed. This app tracks your insulin dosage, and is all done very easily. The app has a “6th Grade Proficiency.”

He also brought Glass-U to the world. This is a folding sunglasses company that is licensed to hundreds of universities and to almost every fraternity and sorority in the United States.

Daniel Fine has brought some cool and helpful stuff to this world and will continue to do so.

A New Generation of Coders

Being able to code is becoming very important. There are a lot of job opportunities, and a lot of fun to be had with coding. Adam Lipecz takes this to another level.  Since a very young age, Adam was obsessed with innovation. He would create and design things that he showed around the world, but perhaps his best invention happened when he was teaching Mechatronics at a university.

Adam had come up with an idea for a toy for children that involved play, and coding. The idea was to take a robot toy and make it move by an app. In this app to make it move you are coding. This teaches children valuable problem solving skills and also coding lessons, all while having fun.

Since this has been created it will be surprising to see how Adam has impacted many of today’s children.

IdeaPaint

IdeaPaintLogo_4cIdeaPaint is a dry erase paint company that was founded in 2002 by John Goscha as a freshman at Babson College in Massachusetts. According Goscha and its other founders Andrew Foley and William Gioielli, IdeaPaint’s purpose is to inspire and encourage everyone in their creative potential through their primary product which can transform almost any smooth surface into an erasable canvas, giving people the space they need to fully explore their ideas.

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Back in their dorms at Babson College, these entrepreneurs would hang large sheets of paper on their walls to have a better space to think through their ideas. However, they would constantly have to tear it down and put more up every time they ran out of room and they thought, Surely there must be a better way. The team searched for this product but, to their surprise, they found nothing. So they set off on a six year journey to make this product commercially viable. Now they are widely successful and have been recognized by Mashable and Forbes. Goscha says “I look forward to the company bringing great products to market that inspire creativity and innovation in all of our customers for many years to come.”

Elliott Bisnow

 

 

Trying to become an entrepreneur may be difficult without having any idea what kind of product or service you would like to provide for people. To make things even more challenging, is not having anyone to collaborate with and or brainstorm ideas. Often doing so may even lead to even more ideas you didn’t even think of. Well Elliott Bisnow created an organization to do exactly these things.

Bisnow founded the company Summit, which is really more of a community than a company, that helps bring entrepreneurs, innovators, and thought leaders together in a collaboration rich environment. In which they can strive to make a positive impact on the world. Among these people are the World’s best nonprofit leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, athletes, and change makers.  All attendees are brought together through large scale annual events called the Summit Series.

Bisnow’s purpose for the Summit series is to create these environments that help immerse people in unique experiences that will result in long lasting relationships. Bisnow’s drive to use the power of collaboration for good is already starting to make an impact. The Summit series events have helped raise millions of dollars towards business, philanthropic, and environmental ventures.

Just two years ago Summit purchased Powder Mountain, which is located in Utah’s Northern mountain range, to create a permanent home for the Summit community. The Summit Powder Mountain community is a ski resort that will be the central site for all upcoming annual and year round events for the Summit Series.

Elliott Bisnow has created a service that will help the leaders around us to create positive growth.

 

Technology and Toys

Evan, a nine year old entrepreneur, has it made. It’s estimated that he will make $1.3 million a year. Doing what? Reviewing toys. His channel, Evan Tube, has over 2.8 million subscribers and over a billion people have viewed his videos, and it’s easy to see why. After visiting his YouTube channel, it’s clear that Evan Tube is the ultimate kid fun zone. There’s videos of him at Universal, doing the “Chubby Bunny” challenge, reviewing the new whip cream in your face game, this kid does it all. Oh, and he’s been doing this since he was five.

This young man has created a brand for himself that has been so successful. Moms and kids know they can visit his channel to get reliable unbiased information from a fun kid perspective. It is the perfect package.

Who knew that technology and toys is all you need to create a successful business? I didn’t. I’m so astonished that a child can create this amazing story for himself all through using technology that was accessible to him and playing with toys that he was already using anyway. Evan, you are a true success!

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Brian Wong

Imagine a world where apps and websites offered prizes instead of pesky advertisements. Well, our sought after technical advances have become a reality once again.

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Brian Wong, a young entrepreneur, tackled this idea at the age of 23. It all began when he started to pay in-depth attention to the people around him and their mobile use habits, especially with application based game play. He then saw the opportunity, stating that  “I remember noticing that there were these achievements that people would be hitting, like leveling up or hitting a high score … but then what struck me was that in those moments of happiness people were actually not being appreciated but rather slapped in the face with a pretty terrible advertisement.” The over all idea in a nutshell is to replace traditional advertisements with prizes after the user has accomplished something in the game. Its brilliant, and an incentive that is way more powerful than random advertisement 95% of users will immediately ignore or even find annoying.

 

Below are some examples of his prize based advertising. Check out his website at www.brianwong.com

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Arjun Rai: Teen Battling Google

When we hear the word “Google” most people think of the monopoly that runs the internet. In a lot of cases this is true, they have complete dominance in the industry of web browsing and most of the advertising. Who would think that an 18 year might combat this multi-billion dollar company? Well, Arjun Rai did just that. After working with and becoming the COO of an online advertising company, Arjun had gained enough experience to start his own online advertising company. This business venture led him to create a company named odysseyAds. OdysseyAds is an online network with a focus on catering to 21st century marketer needs. As a young entrepreneur myself I find this story to be very inspiring just because of the fact that we do have people out there who aren’t afraid of these market dominating companies.

13-Year-Old Bow Tie Connoisseur

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(Image from mosbowsmemphis.com)

I’ve loved Moziah Bridges ever since I saw him on Shark Tanka few years ago. He’s thirteen and he has his own bow tie company. He started it when he was nine under the supervision of his mom, Tramica. The thing I love most about his company is how cool the brand is. Everything about it, from the story to the bow tie designs to the way his website is set up, seems to flow together to form one coherent brand that is totally his own. He’s been successful, too. This year alone, he’s projected to make $250,000 in revenue. He sells mainly through his online store but has branched out into shops and boutiques across the United States, too.

I think his story is inspiring because he’s a perfect example that all you need to start a great company is a vision and a support system. He had no experience with the fashion industry when he got into it at nine years old, just a dream and a helpful mom. It’s grown into something huge, just because he had the courage to start.

Moziah still has a lot of dreams he’s chasing after. His goal is to be in college with his own clothing line by the time he’s 20. He also wants to get more involved with charities. Right now, he’s donating money from his business to help his local community center in Memphis.

I think Moziah’s story is fantastic. It’s a simple and classic example of what can happen when you have good intentions and a vision for where you want to go. We can all learn a lot from him.
 

“Water” You Waiting For?

 When he was just eleven, Richie Stachowski found his family’s vacation to Hawaii frustrating as he couldn’t speak to his father while they were snorkeling. Such an awful problem to have, right? That evening, after their snorkeling adventure, he began drawing designs and ended up spending his $267 of savings to build a prototype underwater megaphone. Richie’s product, appropriately named the Water Talkie, was built using a small plastic cone, a blow valve and a mouthpiece, allowing swimmers to talk to each other under water.

This completely solved his problem of not being able to talk to his father underwater! The young inventor patented his invention and started Short Stack LLC, a company name inspired by his love for pancakes.

The young entrepreneur took a few days off school to present Toys “R” Us with his idea and was shocked when he received an order for 50,000 units! Other retailers, including K-Mart and Walmart, soon followed, and his Water Talkies were the hit of the summer of 1997, netting Richie’s company around $500,000 in revenue.

Three years after inventing the Water Talkie, Richie sold his company and the rights to produce his inventions to Wild Planet Toys in San Francisco. This company then went on to produce more exciting underwater products like a pool pogo stick, underwater binoculars, and Pool Peepers- swim masks that make a child appear to be an animal or creature of some sort when coming out of the water. All Richie’s inventions are still available in stores as well! Maybe we can all get some Water Talkies and have our Elevator Pitches underwater next year!

Richie Stachowski’s journey as an inventor is an inspiration to all of us, proving that creativity, simplicity and fun are a good foundation for successful product ideas.