At fifteen-years-old Fraser Doherty loved to cook jam from one of his grandmother’s old recipes. He began to sell local to neighbors and such. His infant company soon began to grow too large for neighbors, and Fraser set his sights on bigger objectives. He borrowed his father’s suit, and he set his mission to pitching his idea to a well-known supermarket in his local area. They rejected Fraser, but that did not kill his spirit. He took improved upon their critiques, and searched his country for a factory that would take a chance on him. All but one said no. Fraser came back the next year with all of his improvements, and he got the deal to distribute his product across all the supermarket’s stores. His company blew up from there. He quickly increased his production to over 20,000 units of jelly. Everyone can take note of his dedication and persistence to never give up on his entrepreneurial goals. The Story of SuperJam: How Fraser Doherty Built a Multimillion-Dollar Jelly Empire (web.com)
Archive for Great Ideas – Page 2
The prosthetic limb market has seen very little innovation since almost its inception. Prosthetics provide necessary balance and stability to those without the corresponding limb, but they are brutally stationary. When we think of pirates with their wooden peg-legs, or Olympic athletes sporting their curved “blade runners”, and any other replacement limb, we basically think of dead weight. The prosthetic is immensely helpful, but it can’t move and, compared to the original, fully-functional limb, it is quite sad. But this market is finally changing with the Esper Hand. In an article in Time Magazine, Leslie Dickstein says, “Esper Bionic’s prosthetic hand is the first AI powered, cloud-based, robotic prosthetic that gets smarter over time. I love the next sentence: “Esper Bionics CEO and co-founder Dima Gazda, a medical doctor and engineer, sees the prosthetic market as ripe for disruption—and setting the stage for a bionic future.” Using AI and the vast amount of technological resources available, Esper Bionics have built a hand that moves like a human hand and evolves to better help the user the more he or she uses it. When I went to their site, the first thing Esper says about the company is fascinating. They state that “Human augmentation is set to transform the way we live, enhancing our physical abilities and unlocking longer lifespans. We are building the first bionic ecosystem of connected devices to push the boundaries of human potential.” I think this market is begging for innovation and I believe Esper Bionics is the company to provide it. What do you think?
Lilly Born was eight years old when she struck upon her innovation gold. Her grandfather had Parkinson’s and was constantly spilling his drink whenever he tried to set his cup down. Her grandmother had to do so much cleaning up, and Lilly wanted to do something about it. That’s when she came up with the Kangaroo cup, a three-legged cup specifically designed to be easy to set down and hard to spill.
The kangaroo cup was a simple response to a simple problem. It is a great example of the typical, “Everyone saw the apple fall, but only Newton wondered why.” The innovation was not necessarily technological, but rather a repurposing of existing technology. She created a cup with three handles, which also doubled as legs to keep the cup from spilling when set down. Anybody could have done this, but nobody had the wit or bravery to do so until Lily.
Lilly has since sold $100,000 of kangaroo cups through crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo. She founded her own company, Imagiroo LLC., to handle the distribution of the cups.
Her ongoing message is that she thought of this idea as only an eight-year-old. If she could do it, anybody can.
Where I find inspiration in this story is the fact that it was not an insane technological innovation, or social revelation. Instead, she took a typical item and applied her observation to it. It gives me hope that even if the idea I have is small, it can still be successful so long as I put effort behind it.
From this story it is apparent to me that we must observe others, not just ourselves, to get a full picture of our entrepreneurial space. Sometimes the sight of someone else struggling with a problem can either give us an idea or bring up a dormant idea we forgot about and give it new life.
Kyle Giersdorf others know him as Bugha which is his in-game user name. Kyle was born on December 30, 2002, and grew up in Pottsgrove Pennsylvania. Bugha’s entrepreneurial venture started when his father mentioned an up-and-coming game called Fortnite. Bugha fell in love with this game and later started to stream on Twitch. Twitch is a gaming live stream platform that allows watchers to donate and subscribe. Bugha was so good at the game that slowly more and more viewers started to join his stream and he started to make a ton off the money of the subscriptions. Bugha also started to win many tournaments and even qualified for and won the Fortnite world cup in 2019. After this, he blew up and created a youtube that now has 4.28 million subscribers.
Bugha, after he had a very big following on all platforms, started to create affordable PC accessories like keyboards mouses and even some PCs. He created these products because when he was young keyboard was so expensive and he could never buy them so now with his products he changed that for many young kids that want to games. Bugha taught me many things throughout his entrepreneurial venture. The first thing I learned is to find something you love instead of trying to do what other people want you to do because then you won’t put your all into your venture. Bugha’s family was very hesitant about his idea of trying to pursue gaming as a job but with some good persuasion, he finally got their approval to chase his dream. Bugha’s story really encourages me to go out and do what I love and hopefully make as much money as he did.
Benjamin Kapelushnik was born on October 14, 1999, in Brooklyn New York. Benjamin got into sneakers when his mom first purchased him some Nike sneakers in middle school. This is when Benjamin Kicks was born he started to get involved in the sneaker resell market. Ben started to purchase one pair of shoes and flipped it for money. He then used that money to buy two pairs and then eventually he was buying hundreds of sneakers at a time. Ben was one of the first in this sneaker reselling Industry and became the “plug” for sneakers.
Ben gained a lot of success when he first met DJ Khaled and created a very close relationship with him. His clients kept getting better since DJ Khaled Ben really created his name in the sneaker industry and also in the music industry. At the age of 16, Ben reached the achievement of one million dollars in sales of sneakers. Ben was also seen on many TV shows like Complex, CNN, Business insider, and The Daily Show. He also won the SHorty awards finalist in 2018. One thing that Ben teaches me is that he is a hard-working man and when he had his goal set to resell sneakers he was laser focused and worked up to a millionaire. Ben also showed the world that no matter your age if you are confident you can achieve anything.
Ben Pasternack is an Australian technology entrepreneur, and he is the CEO of three businesses. The three businesses he runs are called simulate, flogg, and monkey. It all started when he was just 14 and got bored in his science class so he decided to create a fun app to pass the time. He created the app called “impossible rush” and this had over 2 million downloads. The best part of his story was what he put in his locker at the end of eight grade that read “If you’re reading this, you really f—ed up.” He said he wanted to never go to school again and wanted to make money with his apps. His most successful business is called simulate and his signature product is NUGGS which is a plant-based nugget simulation. I thought that his story was very interesting because he was not the type of kid to pay attention in any of his classes in school. I respect how he found what he was good at and just focused on that when starting his own businesses. His journey is inspiring because at the young age of 16 he had to move from Australia to the United States by himself. He said there were times he felt very lonely but fought through it by focusing on his passion of developing new apps. I also thought it was clever how he uses different social media platforms to reach his customers. He takes full advantage of the web so he can optimize his success for each of the businesses he owns.
Luke Economou is a Greek/American young entrepreneur who goes to UC Santa Barbara. Luke was born in Connecticut but has lived around half of his life in Santa Monica, California, before moving to Santa Barbara this past year for school. I consider Luke to be one of my closest friends from back home as we have known each other for almost 10 years now (ever since he moved to Los Angeles) and have built a brother-like relationship. Luke has always had a passion for fashion and is one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial-minded individuals I have met. Similar to me, Luke graduated high school right after the COVID pandemic hit in 2020. He was originally planning to attend UCSB right away but instead decided to attend a local community college online. It was during this time that he started his designer/streetwear brand, Madman. Luke’s vision with Madman is to provide extremely stylish and luxury clothing that blends the culture of Los Angeles with our inner “madman.” The moto for his brand is, “What’s done in the dark, must come to light.” Luke wanted to establish a culture around his brand so that when people acquired his fashion pieces, they became part of the Madman family. Luke has been selling his product mostly through his online store, https://madmanlosangeles.com/, but has also initiated multiple pop-up stores in various locations around Los Angeles. Most notably, Luke held pop-up stores and events several times in the renowned shopping mall, The Beverly Center, at the Lost Warhol’s concept store. Madman was featured on the Beverly Center’s main attraction screen and has received overwhelmingly positive feedback on his brand’s design, message, culture, comfortability, uniqueness, and much more.
Sean Belnick is an entrepreneurial genius. At just the age of 14 while attending pope high school he created a website that sold office furniture. The name of the company is Bizchair and Sean’s net worth is 42 million. The way that Sean got into this industry of selling products online all started with selling Pokemon cards on eBay. After he got a passion for this he put money into advertising and created the website himself at just 14 years of age. For a kid in high school to create a fully functioning website is truly spectacular. Even though he was young he still possessed so much ambition to sell things that he figured out how his father’s business ran and created a website off of that model. The reason why Sean’s business took off was because of how ahead he was in using the internet. He saw that it would be easier to sell things if they were out there for the whole world to see them.
In 2006 2o-year-old Sean was making 24 million dollars in revenue. Because of Sean’s ambition, he isn’t content with what he has. He wants to expand and expects his sales to be 50-54 million dollars in 2007. Sean was running a million-dollar company while attending college because he believed that he still had more to learn in the business field. He is also a boss of 75 employees at that time all of whom are older than him. Sean stated that he liked being younger than them because the working environment wasn’t as stressful and the employees came to him more often if they have ideas or concerns. Sean’s story really shows how ambition is a key trait to possess when becoming an entrepreneur. Without it, there would be no reason to try and make anything better than it is.
Adelle Archer, CEO and co-founder of Eterneva, is on both the Inc and Forbes 30 Under 30 lists. In addition, Mark Cuban invested in her business when she went on Shark Tank in 2019. Eterneva is a business that Archer created after her friend and mentor Tracy Kaufman died from pancreatic cancer. The company produces diamonds out of loved ones’ ashes; Archer conceived of Eterneva because at the time, there were not many options for memorializing passed loved ones. Although cremation is at an all-time high popularity, the ashes get thrown away after about one generation. More lasting, however, would be diamonds made by Eterneva. Diamonds, Archer believed, not only allow people to mourn, but they also allow people to celebrate. I love Archer’s view that people should both mourn and celebrate. The idea is one that Christians should take to heart, as we recognize that death is not part of how the world should (and will) work, and yet hold that it is a gateway to the sweet next life with our loving Savior. Archer knows that the seven to eight month process for making the diamonds is not a drawback but a strength because it gives people time to mourn and process the death. The Eterneva team sends videos, pictures, and updates to mourning clients as they wait for the diamonds, which I believe is an innovative way to care for people. On the celebration side, the Archer counts on the diamonds to encourage people to share stories about the people who died. According to Archer, the diamonds help people to lean into the subject of death instead of turning away from it. Archer believes, and I wholly agree, that our culture hides death too much, and that communication about death is vital to caring for grieving neighbors.
Hart Main, age 13
When Hart Main was 13 years old, his little sister Camryn was selling candles for a school fundraiser. He remembers teasing her for the “girly scents” and saying that only women would buy her candles. This jovial teasing turned into a business idea later on when Hart was saving for a $1500 bicycle. In order to reach a larger crowd Hart created ManCans, candles scented to appeal to men as well. Instead of flowery, sweet scents, ManCans candles smell like a “fresh new baseball glove.”
Hart’s business idea was like no other, it was unique, and appealed to a new genre of people; for this reason, ManCans rapidly took off selling more than 300 candles a week. “It started as a Joke; it really wasn’t meant to turn into anything serious” says Hart. Thanks to his mother’s encouragement, his jokes became reality. “Even if it sounds like they’re joking, if their idea sounds like something they can do, by all means, I tell them to go for it,” Amy, Hart’s mom, says. Hart’s little sister also has a dog-walking business of her own, which was sparked by a simple conversation in the car.
Starting off, Hart had high ambitions, a little too high for a startup business; however, he was encouraged by his mom to stick to his main scents and branch out as expenses allow. Right now, ManCans offers eight unique scents such as: NY Style Pizza, Grandpa’s Pipe, Sawdust, Campfire, New Mit, Fresh Cut Grass, Coffee, and even Bacon. Along the way ManCans featured the scent “Money to Burn” but because of low sales has since been discontinued.
Variety of ManCan Scents created by Hart Main
Hart makes all his candles in soup-cans, and although it is a for-profit business, he donates soup to local soup kitchens with a portion of the proceeds. This is a prime example of how you can make a positive influence in the world, without necessarily donating all of your earnings to charity.
ManCans has been a business of trial and error. Hart took something laughable and made it sellable. ManCans serves as a perfect example that products don’t have to serve just one audience, and there is always a way to make things marketable to different groups. Young entrepreneurs should be encouraged by Hart’s story to not reject a product, until they attempt see it from a different angle; in Hart’s case, this meant making masculine scented candles.