Matt Mullenweg started his adult life as a political science major at the university of Huston. He soon realized that this was not the place for him and he dropped out of college. He then worked at a network company for two years before leaving and creating his own company. He and a friend started Auttomattic, an internet company that has brands such as word press and tumblr. It is great to see a success story where someone found out that school wasn’t their calling and decided to leave and pursue a different path. Mullenweg had extreme courage to leave the normal path and plunder into the path of the unkown. We sometimes think that to become successful we must follow the lead of many other successful people and go to college, the fact is that if the college path isn’t for you, you may still gain wisdom in other ways and become successful in your own way. Mullenweg is now the CEO of Automattic which currently owns Word Press and its over 70 million websites.
Archive for Great Ideas – Page 7
Palmetto State Armory was founded in 2010 by former military veteran Jamin McCallum. After returning home from service, Jamin noticed that there were many problems in the modern firearms industry in America.
As an avid business man and gun-enthusiast, Jamin decided to do something about this problem. The main problem that he recognized was that there was not a firearms company with good customer service for your average, everyday gun owner. In 2010, Jamin opened his first retail store and committed his business to revolutionizing the firearms market in America by providing a firearms company that was centered around excellent and even better customer service.
This business model provided a real shake up to the sleepy firearms market, which was in need of new ideas and new processes in order to make it more accessible and successful. People immediately gravitated towards Jamin’s company and he was able to grow his business over the next few years with the help of friends and other military veterans.
His company started out as an ammunition and magazine company and he quickly grew the company to manufacture his own line of firearms. Some of Jamin’s best products are his AR15 and AK47 product lines, which are affordable, quality products that are backed by the company’s excellent customer service and commitment to quality and excellence.
Jamin is an impressive entrepreneur because he was able to recognize a real need in the market, and was able to use the skills that he had learned in the military and in business to start a successful company. Palmetto State Armory is a great company and proves that companies can become successful if they focus on their customers and commit to making their products as good as they can be.
In 2019, there is a new technology that could revolutionize the way communications are done over the internet. Founded by Janosch Amstutz, this new technology is, “a high-definition augmented reality platform that brings a perceived three-dimensional experience of human beings into your living room. This new platform is in its beta stages in the entertainment, fashion and education realms where one can virtually be present in a fashion show, a classroom or a sports game. HoloMe is not a video or a recording, but a live face to face interface, where one can see the person they are talking to and their surrounding. It is captured by any camera and is processed immediately so that it can be seen on the other end at the same time. As put by Amstutz, “Augmented reality humans are really more immersive and emotive than any other technology that’s been out there with regards to delivering a message, having a human in your own space, communicating with you directly is much more powerful as a medium.” HoloMe will be fully operational by the end of 2019, and will be raising money and involved in different partnerships in order for it to take off. One further benefit this could have is to be a resource for doctors to help patients in regions where it is unsafe to physically go and in places where there are a shortage of doctors. This new innovation could improve many different areas of communication where calling and skyping lack.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/nine-innovators-watch-2019-180971194/?page=4
Bees, they’re pes
ky, buzzing, and can cause a pretty painful sting. Lemonade, it’s a tasty, cool, refreshing drink on a summer’s day. The two don’t have much in common but, Mikaila Ulmer decided to bring these ideas together with her business Me and the Bees Lemonade. Mikalia Ulmer was born in Austin, Texas to parents who inspired her to be innovative.
When she was four years old, they encouraged her to sign up for a children’s business competition, where she had to come up with an idea for a business and pitch it to judges. Before the competition, a big idea came to her after two surprises happened.
The first surprise came in the mail when her great grandmother sent her an old family cookbook from the 1940s. This cookbook contained a particularly delicious recipe for Flaxseed Lemonade.
The second came from a less exciting surprise, a pretty painful one to experience as a kid playing outside in the summer, a bee sting. There were two bee stings, to be exact. Mikalia was scared at first, scared of bees and their hurtful sting. Yet, something about bees captivated her, she wanted to learn all about them. She learned how crucial bees were to our ecosystem, why even though they bring a painful sting, they also bring beautiful things, like flowers. She knew that wanted to help them.
That’s where she brought her ideas together, bees and lemonade, and started with a lemonade stand. This lemonade stand led to her business Me and the Bees Lemonade. Here, she sells Flaxseed Lemonade sweetened with honey and donates 10% of the money that she makes to organizations that help the honeybees. She started her own non-profit, the Healthy Hive Foundation, which works to raise awareness and to create more safe environments for honeybees.
Since, then, her business has grown from a lemonade stand and a recipe in her great grandmother’s cookbook. Makaila went on Shark Tank when she was 9 and got a deal with Daymond John for $60,000. The business has grown over the years, Me & The Bees Lemonade has expanded from the website and small grocery stores to grocery chains like Whole Foods and Wegman’s. In 2017, she was named as one of TIME’s most influential teens. She’s used her experience to help out others who are interested in entrepreneurship. She travels with the Dell Women Entrepreneurship Network and helps out with their youth program, where she taught with a Finance 101 class in Cape Town, South Africa.
She’s currently writing a book on story and how she came to be the CEO of her own company. Mikalia says to young entrepreneurs, “You’re never too young to start a business. ” She wants to inspire kids, and adults, to create something based on their passions. On her own future, she says, “I definitely have a lot of goals, but as my dad always said, it’s important to work step by step and take each little goal at a time.” Mikalia really is an example of a young entrepreneur taking steps to grow a business, one goal at a time.
A.J. Fernandez was born in March 1979, and began his cigar operations in the country of Nicaragua. Unlike many other cigar manufactures A.J. Fernandez, who is known as “Tabacalera Fernandez”, in his home country, Fernandez had humble beginnings. When Fernandez first began his company, he began with only six cigar rollers in a small, worn down facility in Esteli, Nicaragua. Here he began to make his name not by making his own cigar brand or cigar lines, but he helped other cigar manufacturers to produce some of their best selling cigar lines.
Fernandez helped the biggest name in all of cigars, Rocky Patel. This is unique to A.J. Fernandez because he was able to learn from some of the most successful cigar manufactures in the world, before he began his own cigar operations. This allowed Fernandez to take the time to develop a sound business plan before beginning his cigar brand, and it gave him the time to focus on the quality and marketing of his successful cigar lines.
After years of working in the cigar industry A.J. Fernandez began two incredibly popular cigar brands: Man O War, and Diesel. These brands helped Fernandez become a household name in the cigar industry, and have become some of the most successful brands in the cigar market. Fernandez’s many brands produce sales of almost 9 million cigars per year and sell to over 30 countries world wide.
Fernandez also revived a discontinued cigar brand in 2010, which was started by his grandfather in 1959 during the infamous Cuban Revolution in order to pay tribute to his grandfather.
By taking the time to learn from other cigar leaders, Fernandez was able to perfect an effective business strategy, which helped him launch his cigar empire. A.J. Fernandez also “bucked the trend” of many other cigar manufacturers by taking the time to perfect his craft, and develop target markets and good marketing strategies. Fernandez’s story is an inspirational story of how hard work and thinking outside the box can lead to great success.
Jack Ma: Founder of Alibaba
Jack Ma’s story of rags-to-riches as a young man from China is one of the most inspiring entrepreneurial stories there is. Ma was born in Hangzhou, China to a poor household. As a young boy Ma always wanted to learn English, because he sensed that the language would one day be important on a national level. After failing two entrance exams, Ma ultimately made it to college and graduated from Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Ma then worked as an english teacher at a university prior to launching his entrepreneurial career.
Upon visiting America in 1995, Ma discovered the Internet and was in awe at the potential of the World Wide Web. Ma also noticed the rise in popularity of online selling by American companies, and realized that China did not have anything similar. After returning to China, Ma became inspired by what he saw in America and drew up a plan to create a Chinese e-commerce company, which he called, “Chinapage.”
After a failed attempt at growing Chinapage to the scale and power that Ma wanted, he left the company and took a job in the Chinese government. Ma made many connections in the government, but still had a grand vision for creating an e-commerce company in China, and left his government job in 1999 to start Alibaba. Ma’s goal was to create a company that would empower small and medium businesses in China to facilitate international trade without the intervention of the government. Ma was initially denied by silicon valley investors before receiving funding from both Softbank and Goldman Sachs to help fund Alibaba. After many years of Alibaba remaining non profitable, the company’s business model prevailed and the company overtook eBay as the largest e-commerce site in China.
While Alibaba faced many challenges throughout its history, the company was able to overcome those challenges to become china’s largest e-commerce site and one of the largest in the world. Alibaba faced lack of funding, slow growth, lack of an international appeal, and much more. In an interview, Ma stated: “Instead of learning from other people’s success, learn from their mistakes. Most of the people who fail share common reasons(to fail) whereas success can be attributed to various different kinds of reasons.” This is incredibly profound, as one of the most important lessons entrepreneurs are taught is that failure is ok. Ma exemplifies what it means to show perseverance, entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity. I learned from reading about Ma that failure is ok, and that you might have to fail many times before you succeed. I also learned how important it is to show perseverance, and trust in your business plan.
Meet Jelani Jones. As a young girl Jelani wanted to start her own business. At the age of 9, she started Lani Boo Bath from a love of being creative. This also stemmed from her bath products and this gave her a wonderful idea. Why not put the two of them together and make a profit. Many years of visiting local farmer’s markets and trying figure out how to make her products perfect, Lani Boo Bath was born. Her support is not just local, but goes world wide. She now tries to inspire other young entrepreneurs as she sells her products on her website and at trade shows in which she can participate.
She has handcrafted all-natural soaps infused with essential oils, bath
bombs an explosion of soothing aromatherapy and moisture-rich ingredients in your bath. All of these things can be found on her website under their respective tabs. Her bath bombs sell for around $4.50 US. Her soaps range from the price of $3.50 to $21.90. This is very impressive for her as she has done an excellent job selling her products. I wish her the best of luck and hope she continues to have success.
Even as late as the early two thousands, the only options for overnight stay were classic Hotel, Motel’s and Inns. People chose from the Embassy Suites, Holiday Inn, Marriott, Motel 6, and the like. All of this changed in October of 2007 with a man named Brian Chesky. Born in Niskayuna, New York he grew up under his mother and
Brian Chesky, CEO of AirBnB
father, both social-workers. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design and earned a degree in Industrial Design. He then moved to Los Angeles and later San Francisco for his job.
He was living with his friend, and would be business partner, Joe Gebbia. The two of them were unable to pay rent that October of 2007, and decided to get creative. Luckily for them, the Industrial Designers Society of America was hosting a conference in San Francisco that month. This is when the genius concept was born. Inflating three air-mattresses on their living room floor, they opened their very own “Airbed and Breakfast” with three guests staying on their first night of operation. These three airbeds helped give the company its name, “AirBnB”. This small scale lodging service continued for several months.
In February of 2008, they adopted Nathan Blecharczyk to the team. Between the three of them, they were ready to begin launching. However, the trio lacked funding to make the launch happen smoothly. In order to obtain the money they needed, they created their own lines of cereal that corresponded with the 2008 presidential candidates: Obama O’s and Cap’n McCains. Impressed by these breakfast endeavors, a seed investment fund took interest them and eventually their concept of AirBnB. With the funding they needed to launch, it didn’t take them long. In its first year, the company could already go international, and was eventually valued at $20 billion by 2015.
The concept of renting out your home on the short term is not a new one. However, back in the late 2000s, there didn’t yet exist a platform to connect guests and hosts. Chesky capitalized on this huge but hidden
opportunity, and was immensely successful because of it. It goes to show that you don’t have to have an amazing invention to start a successful business. You could simply create a more efficient way of doing something, in this case, connecting renters and guests. Because Chesky could effectively serve as the more convenient middle man in this already existing market, his business endeavor was wildly successful.
For a young teen a silly joke became a money making venture. Hart Main’s sister was selling candles as a fundraiser for school and he said that they smelled too girly. He then had the idea to create manly scented candles. His little snarky comment has turned in to a success. Main has flavors such as campfire, bacon, fresh cut grass, grandpa’s pipe, and more. He had an initial investment of 100 dollars and his parents invested 200 dollars. He now has sold 9,000 units and is in 60 stores around the nation. Main has decided to keep to his studies mostly due to the fact that he’s only 14. Maybe one day his idea for the ManCans’ will take off and be see in Walmarts. It’s so cool to see how these young teens can find ways to create small successful businesses.
In 2004, fourteen-year-old Fraser Doherty of Scotland began a remarkable career. It all started when his grandmother taught him her jam recipe, which contained 100% fruit. In 2007 (using his grandmother’s recipe), Doherty took his jam company, SuperJam, to Waitrose – a UK supermarket company. Doherty went on to become the youngest person to ever supply a large supermarket chain.
By the time Fraser was seventeen, he had generated over $750,000 in sales. Furthermore, he has sold millions of cans of jam since the company’s inception. In addition to this, Doherty went on to invest in many charitable projects and organizations. He has hosted hundreds of free “SuperJam Tea Parties” for the elderly and has invested much of his time into community beekeeping projects.
Fraser has also written many books, from business how-to guides to cookbooks. He has also received many awards, such as the “Enterprising Young Brit of the Year” award in 2004 and the “Global Student Entrepreneur of the Year” award in 2007.
In 2013, Doherty co-founded Beer52, the world’s largest beer club. It has become one of the must successful startups in Scotland, with more than 200,000 customers. Beer52 also produces the UK’s top craft beer magazine, Ferment.
What started as a fun experience with his grandmother has radically transformed Fraser’s life. All it took was acting upon a unique idea: a jam made with 100% fruit.