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Archive for Investing

Alinea- Eve Halimi and Anam Lakhani

Posted by Hannah Ya

· Friday, October 25th, 2024

· 2 Comments

Have you ever wanted to try out investing but was never taught very well, or do you want to know how to make some money passively? If you’re curious to learn more about investing, then Alinea is the solution for you! Alinea was founded by Anam Lakhani and Eve Halimi when they were only just 24 years old! They came up with the idea in class at Barnard College, Columbia University because they noticed that some of their classmates didn’t want to invest because they didn’t know a lot about it. They also realized that not knowing a lot about investing shouldn’t stop you from trying so they created Alinea, but what is Alinea? Alinea is an investing app that was created with Gen Z’s in mind to help them grow their investments. Alinea is also backed up by Harvard, Goodwater, Kima, Y Combinator and many others. Eve and Anam created this app because it can hard and tricky to understand financial markets, especially today. The internet and technology keep growing, and so do the opportunities to make money. Alinea is a great way for new investors to get more familiar with the stock market and they also offer an “inclusive community for new investors.”

In the app, there’s personalized investing recommendations and caters towards different demographics and generations. Another cool feature of the app is how users can even start investing with as little as $1 for fractional shares of stocks and EFTs. Not every investing app lets you start off with $1, and with the starting price being so low the risks are also pretty low. Alinea also has a feature called “playlists” that are groups of stocks that can be customized based on what your values or lifestyles are. There’s even the option to invest in female-founded companies and many others. Over the years, this app has $2.1 million in funding from a lot of strategic investors and even Hardvard! Alinea is SEC registered investment advisor, FINRA & SIPC Insured as a drivewealth partner, and bank-level security, and SSL & 256-bit encryption. Having all of these features makes investing safer and easier, with lower risks and a whole lot of learning without the stress! With an annual membership only being $96, you can get access to a whole lot of support and learning opportunities on how to invest! Check out their website here!

Sources:

ALINEA INVEST : FOUNDING STORY | Alinea Invest: Social Investing App for GenZ

ALINEA, NEW FEMALE-FOUNDED FINTECH AND Y COMBINATOR BACKED APP, REINVENTS CREATIVE INVESTING FOR GEN Z

2 Comments

Categories : Activism, App, App development, Education, Entrepreneurship, Female Empowerment, Investing, Software

Have you seen these shoes?

Posted by Kasianideseg21

· Saturday, September 17th, 2022

· 4 Comments

Have you seen these shoes?

These are BANGS Shoes, created by Hanna Davis. After teaching in China, she noticed the green canvas work shoes worn by locals and was inspired to create change. She came up with the idea to use shoes to help workers provide for their families and build self-sufficiency in other countries. Backed by her family, she was able to invest in an initial shipment. She had a website, business cards, and a model. She paid the manufacturing fee and was delivered no product. As she started over and began to save again, she worked as a bartender. One night she struck up a conversation with an elderly couple who took an interest in her. They began to ask her about herself, and Hanna began to grow uneasy at the targeted questions, not wanting to disclose the specifics. She took down their information and later that week, decided to look him up. The man turned out to be a retired VF executive. VF is a corporation that owns outdoor adventure and apparel companies such as Vans, Supreme, The North Face, Jansport Dickies, and more. Two months later, George and Gayle Darrah become signed investors and business partners.

BANGS Shoes comes from the Chinese character “to help” and the brand prioritizes self-sufficiency. They source their materials ethically and employ the working class to help manufacture their products. They then take 20% of their profits and loan them through a non-profit to help other entrepreneurs get started. They have helped over 5,000 entrepreneurs in over 12 different markets in 79 countries.

Today, BANGS can be found all over Instagram, promoting outdoor adventure, encouragement, and positivity. Their unique shoes are a talking point and a casual staple in closets. On their webpage, they feature which rotates to highlight one of their entrepreneurs. Another section, titled “15 Things You Can Do Right Now” encourages movement and connection. Through its mission statement and engagement with customers, the brand effectively uses its platform to help others and create positive change in local economies.

If you would like to check them out you can find their Instagram Here

Or click to view their Website.

4 Comments

Categories : Entrepreneurship, Enviornmental, Handmade, Healthy Lifestyle, Investing, Redemptive Entrepreneurship, shoes, Women Entrepreneurs, Young Entrepreneur

Mikaila Ulmer: Founder of “Me & the Bees” Lemonade

Posted by campagnama21

· Thursday, October 21st, 2021

· 2 Comments

Mikaila Ulmer is a 17-year-old girl who started her own lemonade business at a very young age. The business idea started after young Mikaila got stung by a bee and wanted to learn more about bees to overcome her fear of them. At age 4, she started a business by creating a very small lemonade stand. Very quickly, this turned into the business “Me & the Bees” as a result.

Mikaila is widely successful, at just age 9, she struck an $11 million distribution deal with US supermarket giants Whole Foods Market. Mikaila has also been invited to the White House twice, featured on Good Morning America, NBC News, Forbes Magazine, and Time Magazine for her entrepreneurial success. Mikaila is very busy; she juggles school, her business, and public speaking. The unique thing about her business is that 10% of her brand’s proceeds are donated to bee conservation charities. It is amazing how she used a challenge of hers (getting stung by a bee) to learn more about it and start up a profitable and charitable business.

Mikaila’s lemonade recipe is unique because it comes from her great Grandmother Helen’s flaxseed lemonade. It is fresh-squeezed, and each bottle is made with care. Her family has a huge part in helping her business thrive. As an extension to her business, Mikaila has created a “Bee-to-Z guide” for young entrepreneurs. Here, young entrepreneurs can find inspiration, business tips, and more to make their big ideas come to life. A very inspirational quote from Mikaila reads, “My generation—we’re the future,” Mikaila says. “When we grow up, we’re going to be the people who are the presidents and the leaders of the world. […] If we start at a young age making a difference, donating back, giving back, when we grow up we can do that on a larger scale.” Mikaila’s business proves that, just like the bees, you are never too small to make a difference.

The 9 Most Successful Teen Entrepreneurs in the World (careeraddict.com)

Mikaila Ulmer of Me & the Bees Lemonade | Microsoft In Culture

2 Comments

Categories : Bees, Beverages, Blog, Business, Charity, Creating, Entrepreneurship, Female Empowerment, grocery store, Handmade, Helping Hands, Investing, Lemonade, Positivity, Power, Shopping, Social Media, Startups, Strong, woman, Women Entrepreneurs, Young Entrepreneur

Tags : bees, charity, food, kid entrepreneurs, lemonade, new idea, recipe, young entrepreneur

Andrew Mason – Groupon

Posted by hasseea20

· Sunday, December 13th, 2020

· 2 Comments

The story of Groupon and its main entrepreneur is a dramatic one. Andrew Mason was a web designer paid by tech billionaire Eric Lefkofsky to drop out of grad school and start a business. With his prior experience and classic dropping-out-of-college storyline, Andrew was heading down the road of successful entrepreneurship.

Although he had built enough reputation to warrant a million dollar investment from a former employer, Mason was still in uncharted territory. In an interview with the Gimlet podcast, Mason had said “In the early days we would buy a bunch of academic books on collective action, and me and the other people there would just sit around and read.” The book learning was effective, but there were still some trial and error steps along the way.

While still figuring out what genre of value Groupon would provide its users, Mason and his partners had a few tries and guesses and trips. The original point was to provide an area for people to come up with an idea and go into it together. “I have a plan, but I’m not going to go through with it unless a lot of people do it with me.” Early on, they would seed ideas out to the public and see if they would take. Business was slow, and eventually the users started coming up with their own ideas.

This caused Mason to risk losing his funding; unless he could find an avenue that would provide steady usage and income, Groupon would be shut down. Mason eventually landed on group discount. Groupon sold retail discounts, giving a cut of each sale to the business providing it. Starting off by manually distributing and building relationships Groupon ended up growing faster than Apple, Google, and Facebook. Though he is no longer a part of Groupon, Andrew Mason continues to work as a successful entrepreneur.

2 Comments

Categories : App, Business, College, Content Entrepreneurs, Creating, eCommerce, Investing, Male Entrepreneurs, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Podcast, Shopping, Startups, Websites

Cameron Johnson

Posted by stewarttessa1

· Thursday, December 3rd, 2020

· 2 Comments

Cameron Johnson started his career path at 9 years old when he made invitations for his parent’s holiday party. Only two years later he had made thousands of dollars selling cards from his business Cheers and Tears. When he was 12 he paid his younger sister 100$ for her 30 beanie babies and sold them on eBay for 10 times the amount he paid. After seeing that this investment worked, he started buying from the manufacture and earned over 50,000$ in profit in less than a year! All from reselling Beanie Babies! Using that money, he started an internet business that brought in 3,000$ a month in advertising. By the time he was only 15 years old, he had started and successfully ran 15 startups with total revenues of between 300,000 to 400,000 dollars a month! Not only that but he also became the youngest foreign kid to ever be appointed to a board of a company in Tokyo! In that very same year, he wrote a book called,” 15-year-old CEO” that became a bestseller in Japan! By 19 his assets were worth more than a million dollars!

Cameron is truly an inspiration because of his keen ability to see opportunities and seize them, something every entrepreneur must do. Unlike most, though, he had that ability at only 9 years old and was able to steadily grow that ability and talent to help him succeed. Several of his business stemmed from similar ideas that he just made better and improved.

2 Comments

Categories : Investing, Kids, Uncategorized

What the Hecht?

Posted by Paige Snyder

· Monday, November 4th, 2019

· 3 Comments

Jared Hecht is a millennial entrepreneur that changed the way the world communicates and made a significant impact in the startup space. In 2009, he graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Political Science. Straight out of Columbia, at the ripe age of 22, the young entrepreneur founded startup messaging platform GroupMe. A little over a year after its official launch, GroupMe was sold to Skype in 2011 for $80 million and Hecht began working for Microsoft, who later acquired Skype. In 2015, Hecht was named to the Forbes “30 under 30” list for his entrepreneurial impact.

Though extremely rewarding, it wasn’t always easy for the young entrepreneur to see the light at the end of the startup tunnel. “Some nights you are on top of the world and think you’re building the best thing ever, and then other nights you think that some horrible competitor is going to knock you off the face of the earth,” says Hecht. However, even with the inherent risk, he confirms that developing ideas and changing the way people communicate is “the best feeling ever.”

Alongside his laundry list of impressive commercial accomplishments, Jared Hecht is vastly changing the social entrepreneurship game. Hecht is the current founder and CEO of Fundera, a start-up investment agency that provides loans and financial planning for entrepreneurial ventures. He has invested and advised successful startups such as Codeacademy, SmartThings, and TransferWise. He also currently sits on the advisory board of the Columbia University Entrepreneurship Organization and is a guest blogger for prestigious business sites like entrepreneur.com and Forbes. Jared Hecht is not only a man with good ideas, but he’s willing to take risks for ventures that he believes in, making him one of this generation’s greatest entrepreneurs.

3 Comments

Categories : Blog, Communication, Investing, Mentorship, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Online Companies, Social Entrepreneur, Technology

Vladimir Tenev: Revolutionizing the Stock Market

Posted by William Hancock

· Thursday, September 12th, 2019

· 1 Comment

Vladimir Tenev is a Bulgarian immigrant who founded one of the most popular budget stock trading platforms within the US marketplace, Robinhood. After being brought to America for a better life, he began his quest to fortune by creating a handful of failed startups including Chronos Research. From this failure, he tried coming up with other ideas but none of them ever came into fruition. During this time he turned to stocks as a source of income and entertainment. At that time, the stock market was full of hidden fees and lots and lots of royalty. He hated that and wondered if there really was a way that he could eliminate all those fees. Soon, he created the idea of a royalty-free stock trading application, Robinhood. He promoted online just to see what the reaction was and if there was really that much interest in it. Within the first day, thousands were interested and over one million showed interest within the first year. Tenev had no prior experience to build a platform of this magnitude. So, he did some research and found what the people wanted and brought the right developers, legal team, and stock market specialists together to make it a reality. To date, the company is valued at over $7 billion and it is still growing. It has quickly become the top stock trading platform for penny stocks, which helps with its royalty free trading strategy. Robinhood has quickly grown and become a prime example of a person, with no experience in the field he is entering, bringing the right tools together for the right people to create a multi-billion dollar company.

Unfortunately, Robinhood’s blatent and public illegal actions by restricting trading during the great GameStop stock short squeeze in January of 2021 has caused it to rightfully lose a large portion of it’s users. Robinhood was at one point the go-to investing app for new investors, but this situation has greatly changed that initial view, as Robinhood’s model has shown to be extremely successful and has been mimicked by many other companies.

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Categories : Investing