Archive for Great Ideas – Page 17

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.

 

A Millionaire High School Dropout

Some of the wealthiest business men have dropped out of school at early ages. From Richard Branson (16) to David Karp (11) to even Benjamin Franklin (10) are included on this list and we all know that they turned out to be okay in life! Taso Du Val has just added his name to this prestigious list of early dropouts to riches. Taso Du Val is a software savant who has had a passion for technology from a very early age in his life.

Taso entered the workforce and joined a startup called Fotolog (business dealing with photo-sharing) as a lead engineer. After Fotolog was bought for $100 million in 2007 he joined another business startup as a lead engineer at Mark Levchin’s company (co-founder of PayPal) called Slide, which was bought by Google in 2010 for $228 million. Du Val, without a doubt, had some early luck and success landing prestigious positions in startups with not much of an academic background that gave him some key foundations for the challenges he will set out to accomplish in the future.

Du Val is currently helping other engineers land great jobs, as well as building his very own multimillion-dollar startup he helped co-found called TopTal. TopTal is based out of San Francisco and connects freelance software developers with businesses in need of programming expertise, rigorously screening applicants and making matches based on each client’s unique project demands and related factors like workplace culture.

Du Val’s story relates a lot to our class as our professor frequently stresses the concept of identifying a problem and thinking of a solution. Du Val recognized there was a problem and heard many complaints about the other players in the game and sought out to capitalize on it. There was a need and an opportunity that had yet to be met. Entrepreneurship cant exactly  be taught and is hardwired into very few people. Some people are just naturally gifted with business smarts and others have to work harder to come by it.

The most important lesson to be learned by his story, no matter what your education or background is, just getting out there and doing it is the most important thing.

Harvard Student and Entreprenuer

Olenka Polak, a daughter of polish immigrants, would frequently find herself at the movie theatre with her family. She and her brother, who had grown up in the states and knew English, understood exactly what was going on in the movie. Her parents, on the other hand, really struggled to enjoy their experience at the cinema due to the language barrier.

During Polak’s time at Harvard, she decided to pursue the solution to this problem. myLINGO allows for non-English speakers to listen and understand a movie in their own language. All you have to do is download myLINGO on a smart phone and bring a pair of headphones to the theatre. Once you’re at the cinema you select the movie you are seeing and the language you want to listen to the film in.

At age nineteen, Polak chose to take time off from Harvard to grow and develop this business. She was featured in Forbes “30 under 30” and seems to be growing into a quite the success story.

We all have something to learn from Polak. Whether it’s her recognition of a problem, or her ambition to leave Harvard and pursue her dreams, she is an inspiration to us all.

 

 

Sword & Plough – Bridging the Civil-Military Divide

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U.S. Army 1st Lt. Emily Núñez and her sister Betsy Núñez grew up in a military family, so for them, living on military bases and eating Thanksgiving dinner with hundreds of soldiers in a military mess hall was the norm.  However, when Emily went to Middlebury College, she realized the huge divide between military life and civilian life.  Most of her friends had never met someone in the military and had no idea what military life was like.  During this time, both Emily and Betsy began to realize how difficult it was for veterans to find work as they transitioned from military to civilian life.

These two problems  culminated into a business idea when Emily attended a social entrepreneurship symposium at her college, where the speaker talked about incorporating up-cycling into a business.  Emily had the idea of recycling military surplus into fashionable bags and accessories.  Emily quickly brought her sister, Betsy, on board and Sword & Plough was born.  The name, Sword & Plough comes from the phrase “to turn swords into ploughshares” from the book of Isaiah.  For Emily and Betsy, this means taking military technologies and materials and applying them to peaceful, military applications.

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Every stage of their business (from design, to production, to quality control, to sales) is done in the U.S.A. and done by veterans.  They even buy their supplies from companies owned and operated by veterans.  Emily and Betsy want their company to empower veterans and help in their transition back to civilian life.  They donate 10% of their profits to support veterans.  They also want to have their bags be a conversation starting point to strengthen military-civilian understanding and to bring to light veteran issues.  In fact, on their website, they have a “Wall of Heroes” to feature a different military personnel every week.

So far, Emily and Betsy’s idea has been a huge success.  They’ve been featured on shows like Good Morning America and the Today Show, and on sites like Business Insider and Forbes.  I encourage you to check out their website (click here!) to learn more about Sword & Plough, its products, and its mission.  I think that this company is poised to make some really important impacts in the near future.

The Friends You Have on Facebook Really Do Matter

When Evita Robinson graduated from college, she identified herself as an artist, hoping to one day be an entrepreneur. As a new graduate, she started traveling. Paris, Tokyo, and Thailand were all places she had visited by the time she was 25. During her worldly adventures, Robinson, like many other millennials, shared her adventures with social media. Soon, she decided to create a group of a few friends she had on Facebook, in order to connect city people to a travel lifestyle. This small group she had created blew up and led to the formation of her business, Nomadness Travelers Tribe.

Nomadness Travelers Tribe is known as, “‘the first group to spearhead targeting diverse millennial travel,”‘ says Robinson. This group is comprised mostly of African American women, living in cities around the world. Some are in poverty, while others experience lavish lifestyles. Yet, they are connected with a love for travel.

Nomadness creates a family between its members with conferences, meetings, and trips that happen worldwide. The trips that this organization puts together are created for the rich and poor through different selling points based on your economical status. To prove just how popular these vacations are Nomadnessx, one travel experience they offer, has an average sell out time of 5 minutes.

Robinson proves how a passion for something, coupled with technology can, in fact, create a business. She says, ‘”If the Internet was a geographic location, Facebook would be the capital. It is where everyone is. If you can start someplace where everyone is and then push out from that point, you have the opportunity to do something special.”‘ Even though her enterprise came to her on accident, she is still a success story. She created a specific environment for a niche audience that has become extremely popular, all through social media.