Archive for Millennial Enrepreneuers

Simone Hufana

Simone Hufana is a great example to college students of how it is totally possible for students to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors and be incredibly successful at it.

Simone started out with a passion for bringing women of color to the spotlight. She developed a clear goal and started taking systematic steps towards it. She was purposeful about engaging in the community and understanding how people felt and what they experienced. Thinking through the ways that she could make the most impact was crucial for her. She networked, attended workshops, used social media, and soon developed a brand with a specific audience.

Her initial idea was to create a coloring book that represented women of color who were influential. ColorHerStory was trying to change the lack of representation of successful and accomplishing women specifically in education. Market research consisted of understanding the needs of her target audience. she sent out surveys engaged with educators and parents

Books and Big Dreams: Inside the Mind of a 19-Year-Old Entrepreneur ...

In 2017 she hit a milestone when she won Shopify’s beast mode a business competition. This showed that the business world recognized her work and the talents and passion that went on behind her business.

Simone’s still developing story is inspiring to young people who have passion’s and visions that are just waiting to come to life. She exemplifies creativity and bravery additionally; she was not afraid to go into coloring books which one would think are a boring market but that actually have a lot of value interest and impact especially in education. In a way she discovered a secret that nobody else was solving in the way she chose to and she has been relentless in pursing success for her mission.

 

Young Stylish Moziah Bridges

Moziah Bridges, a young stylish talented individual. Moziah at the age of nine loved style, and at this age he struggled to find a suitable bowtie. He decided to start his own business called Mo’s Bows, pretty clever for his age. Although, for him it wasn’t just giving the name and saying this is my business, he had to learn how to sew and then he innovated in making colorful bowties by using his grandmothers left over sewing projects. As time went on Bridges hired tailors, and he just took care of the business and creative side of things. This business was on shark tank as Bridges give his run down on the business. He has been pretty successful as a bowtie businessman, selling more than $700,000 in handmade men’s ties and accessories. A couple cool things that Moziah has done with his business is he made a custom “Obama Blue” tie for President Barack Obama, and his company has produced bowties and neckties to all thirty National Basketball Association teams crossed the country! That is very impressive for where he had to start and to where he is now. These are so very cool and interesting facts that his company will forever remember. Now, Moziah’s company has other companies that carry his ties, like Cole Haan, Bloomingdale’s, and Neiman Marcus. These are some very big businesses. Also, he is a Memphis native and in 2012 he started a Go Mo Summer Camp Scholarship Fund. This is a charity, and its goal is to send Memphis kids to summer camp. To the most recent date, this charity has sent more than fifty kids to summer camp. Overall, this is a great story and an even more successful business.

Link to Article: 10 Successful Young Entrepreneurs

Mo's Bows

Glossier- Emily Weiss

Most likely if you were to ask just about anyone under the age of 21 if they’ve heard of Glossier, they would say yes. From popular makeup products to clothing and a variety of other products, this beauty company is much more than just lip-gloss and mascara. Glossier, which is most well-known for its classic lip balms has made its way into millions of makeup bags around the world. Created in 2014, the company started out as a beauty website that was founded to share genuine information with people from all over. Glossier has built its foundation on the slogan, “Skin first, beauty second.” They have devoted their company to being beyond makeup, because they believe that healthy skin promotes natural beauty rather than makeup that is used to try and cover that natural beauty.

Since its launch in 2014, Glossier has amassed over 1.8 billion dollars. Its co-founder Emily Weiss spoke in ELLE magazine about all of the iterations of Glossier and how its adapted and changed through the years. Starting in 2014, Emily raised 2 million dollars in funds to kick start her business, and in its beginning years it prided itself in being direct-to-consumer. But in 2022, customers and fans of the company were begging in just about every way for the company to be sold in another popular retailer, Sephora. And within one year of this merge, Glossier had grown 100 million dollars in sales in Sephora locations alone.

Continuing in the interview, Weiss expands on how important the company’s image beyond makeup has brought devout customers to the brand, she references how, “We want to create a brand whose sweatshirt you want to wear,’ and here we are, lots of sweatshirts sold.” Emily’s Quote truly represents Glossier in its whole, how a company so revolutionary for its time is truly unlike any other beauty brand on the market, and how Glossier’s innovative and unique ways have created the wonderful community that surrounds the company.

 

a brunette woman with her arms crossedGlossier Review - Must Read This Before Buying

Glossier

From Locker Rooms to Runways: The Under Armour Brand Journey

Under Armour was founded by Kevin Plank in 1996. He was 24 years old and started out his company where most young entrepreneurs do, his grandmother’s basement in Washington, D.C. While in college Plank was the special team’s captain of the University of Maryland football team. So naturally he was into sports and saw an opportunity for a clothing brand. He expressed how he hated having to change out of sweaty t-shirts worn under his jerseys. He found that his compression gear stayed dry, and he realized he needed to create his clothing out of that material. His early sales were out of the trunk of his car on the East Coast.

His first big sale was $17,000 worth of gear. He sent his first prototypes to his teammates and friends to see what they thought of it. With this exercise he was then able to tweak his design and fabric choice with their feedback. Kevin decided to use the British spelling for “armour” since it was still available to be taken for his clothing line. Under Armour got a huge deal when Warner Brothers used the brand in two films, Any Given Sunday and The Replacements. When it was all said and done Plank was able to purchase an ad in ESPN The Magazine which earned him and his brand $750,00 in sales. In 2000, Under Armour became the main outfitter of the ne XFL football league. From there they earned many investments in the millions of dollars range. From there they were able to put funds to better branding, commercials, and store fronts. One main thing that has stuck is their motto “Protect this house”. This motto has been around for a very long time and is an example of keeping and sticking to something that they believe in. As many of us know, Under Armour is a very successful brand that was formed from a need for better athletic gear and look where they are today!

 

Erin Smith- Founder of FacePrint

Erin Smith a nine teen year old girl, thought unlike anyone else. She was watching a video of a guy named Michael Fox, and from that video, Smith had some great ideas, and she couldn’t get those ideas off her mind. Her analysis of it was “Whenever a Parkinson’s patient would laugh or smile, it came off as really emotionally distant.” Smith took this and reached out to clinicians and caregivers to ask about this, and she found out that they have seen similar facial expressions from their patients. This was all before a Parkinson’s diagnosis was made. Smith who is a science enthusiast grew up doing experiments in her own kitchen. She wanted to make a change so people could be diagnosed with a disease, so she got to work and started to build a diagnostic system that was called FacePrint. This is really cool to see, as Smith saw a problem with a laugh or a smile, she knew there was a issue and that she needed to make a change to help these people out. She innovated in a special way to help this generation with a serious problem. Face Print is a selfie stick that captures changes in facial expressions over time to help catch disorders like Parkinson’s.  Smith hopes that FacePrint becomes a tool that diagnoses and monitors the disease. As of now, her creation has an 88 percent accuracy rate and that is nearly 7 percent more than regular tools. Smith has been receiving funds from Michael Fox foundation and pharmaceutical companies. Her technology is going under trial at Standford University. Smith has done some many great things with this product and to sum it up she had said this “I really want to optimize for my personal learning,” and “as well as for the best way I can help shape and build the future of neurological and mental healthcare.” This is so amazing for a teenager to do. The fact that she is saving our generations health is just so awesome. She definitely fills for a girl with a mind like an entrepreneur but not only that, she wants to help everyone, that is so special.

Link to Source: Meet 16 Teen Founders Who Are Building Big Businesses — and Making Big Money | Entrepreneur

Isiah Nichols – From True Crime to Bible Thoery

Isiah Markin is a 25 year old entrepreneur and Youtuber. He started his Youtube career back in 2019, and saw explosive results and now is sitting at close to 4 million subscribers. His content was a massive hit, with his highest viewing video surpassing over sixteen million views. But what is it that allowed Isiah to see such massive and stable growth so quickly? Most youtubers take nearly decades to achieve an audience as large and passionate as his, so what did he do differently? 

Isiah approached the platform with next to no expectations, but soon found that his take on unique niche content, looking at and regarding the supernatural and true crime, found an audience quickly. From out of pocket one liners and an entertaining presentation of the t stories, his audience grew quickly. However, of everything that brought him the fame that he has achieved in such a short amount of time, his quippy one liners allowed him to see massive success and growth from people clipping and sharing the lines across the internet. One of his most famous lines was “If I look up into the night sky and see a McDonalds ad, I’m becoming a terrorist.” Comments like these as well as entertaining stories that he genuinely has a passion for saw some massive growth and welcoming form his audience. 

However it wasn’t all luck. Isiah at heart is an entrepreneur and As mentioned, his one liners and out of context sayings propelled him to the top of the leaderboards at an unprecedented speed. However this was by design. Exposure and the first 5 second interactions with a person can sway them to click on your content or learn more about you, and when there are clips and compilations of all the absurd and out of context things that bring a genuine laugh to the audience, the recipe was foolproof. 5 years later, Isiah is now working with many different companies managing his own personal brand and merch, as well as working with GSC Game World film studio on their most recent production S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of the Zone. It will be very interesting seeing where this young entrepreneur goes in the next couple of years!

Figma: A Design Powerhouse

Origins

Has anyone here heard of Figma? I hadn’t heard of it until a few years ago. But If I were to ask if you have heard of Adobe, I bet many of you know what it is. Figma is a design platform that is a web-based design tool that allows users to create, share, and test digital products and services. It is often looped into the same group around designers when talking about Adobe and its many products. Figma’s founder Dylan Field was just 20 years old when he and his classmate Evan Wallace released it to the public. While Field was working as an intern for Flipboard and LinkedIn he was spotted to have great potential. Which they most certainly were not wrong. Against Fields’ parents’ wishes he decided to drop of college at Brown University to participate in the Thiel Fellowship program which led to him earning a $100,000 grant from Peter Thiel co-founder of PayPal.

Future Trends

It took 4 years of testing and development before it was released to market in 2016. Figma has a flexible feature set and a freemium pricing scale that helped take some market away from Adobe. Figma saw great success during the pandemic due to so many having much more free time to learn about things and software that interested them. Figma soon grew to 850 employees and was set to be bought by Adobe for $20 billion. However, this deal soon fell through in 2023 and both companies agreed to terminate their merger agreement. As of the summer of 2024 Figma was on track to hit $700 million annual recurring revenue. Nevertheless, Figma is a huge powerhouse when it comes to general design and I have found it is incredibly powerful at website design, something that think Adobe is lacking. It is a very great resource to know both design software’s because there are things that one does better than the other.

If you would like to learn more please visit https://www.figma.com/about/

Pixel To Persona: Safiya Nygaard

Safiya Nygaard is a very successful American Youtuber from Chicago, Illinois. She attended Standford University, studying English and Drama. She quickly noticed her love for production and began working for BuzzFeed in 2015. She started her career at BuzzFeed creating the popular show called Ladylike with a few others. After she left BuzzFeed she was able to put more effort into her own YouTube channel. She has gained over 10 million subscribers since she started posting on her channel in 2017.

Collabs, New Brand, and Other Opportunities:

YouTubers certainly are entrepreneurs but not what some people would think. YouTubers advertise content and as they come into their “voice” that then turns into a brand and this has been successful for many YouTubers including Safiya. Safiya has been able to be a part of many great projects and opportunities. Some of these projects include creating a lipstick collection with popular makeup brand: ColourPop. Aswell as collaborating with fellow YouTuber Cristine Rotenberg AKA Simplynailogical with a limited-edition collection of nail polish from Cristine’s brand Holo Taco. Safiya also owns her own apparel brand called Fiendish Behavior which is a perfect embodiment of who she is. She has added her makeup experiments to her hoodies, t-shirts, stickers, tote bags, blankets, and sweats. Safiya would call her clothing style as “comfortable vampire” which means wearing all black in comfortable styles and textures.

She is known for her series called “Bad Beauty Science” which essentially means mixing large amounts of a single type of products and creating a “Franken” etc (She has mixed almost every type of makeup product together).  This has iterated into many off shoots of channel topics. She loves testing “Weird Fashion” such as Platform Crocs, 9-foot-long jeans and many many more. Recently she has moved into showcasing her cool travel opportunities with her husband also fellow YouTuber Tyler Williams. They have visited an underwater hotel, slept in an Igloo, slept in a Japanese Capsule Hotel, and again many other places. As a fellow viewer and subscriber, I like to say she is an investigative channel of weird things but weird is a good thing because that makes the content very interesting. I found her channel in 2018 so I have been a loyal lover of her content for 7 years and still enjoy every aspect of her videos. One other detail I would like to mention is when she has a video idea she will do whatever it takes to complete it just because she is that interested in the topic. Some of my favorite longer more deep dive type videos include, “I Stayed At Every Hotel On The Vegas Strip”, “I Ate At Every Celebrity Chef’s Restaurant On The Vegas Strip”, and “I Got An 18th Century Makeover” just to name a few. In her 18th Century Makeover video she got the opportunity to live out her childhood dreams and visit Colonial Williamsburg and get to wear 18th century attire and get to participate in activities there. In her earlier videos she would mention how she wanted to go to Colonial Williamsburg and now she finally got to go. It was really cool for me as a fan to see her get to visit a place she always talks about, and I was very invested in videos like these.

Conclusion:

These videos take a lot of time, planning, and funding. I am amazed at the work that is put into these videos from Safiya, Tyler and their team. Both of them are also relatively young being 32 and 33 years old. They all have been working very hard on this channel and brand since they graduated college. As a long story short I really wanted to showcase at least one YouTuber in the blog post agenda and I think it is a very interesting type on Entrepreneur to research.

Here is Safiya’s YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbAwSkqJ1W_Eg7wr3cp5BUA

(I tried every method but I was unable to add any pictures, her thumbnails are really eye catching)

Wise Pocket – Sofia Overton

Sofia Overton noticed at just 13 years old a common problem: many clothes for children and women lacked pockets. She came up with an idea to solve this problem, socks with built in pockets. With the help and support of her family and friends she turned this idea into a business and started selling them. Deciding to go on shark tank was one of the best choices she ever made. She rigorously prepared and made a massive effort to improve her presentation skills. The Sharks were impressed by her pitch, and they offered her a deal. The deal was $35,000 for 25% equity in wise pocket products. After this win, her company grew through new problems and challenges. The company started to use social media to grab interest in their products and carved out a unique space in the fashion world. The socks come in fun colors and patterns and in many stylish choices.

10 Interesting Facts About Sofi Overton You Do Not Wish to Miss Out

Sofia’s business endeavors serve as a great example to young people today who have a dream of starting a business. Not only did she find a problem with a unique market, but she competed on shark tank and earned a deal. This deal launched her business into a new level of success. While navigating new problems and challenges the business grew into different areas of interest for a unique market.

It’s inspiring to see someone take an idea and run with it. We can learn from Sofia and learn to take risks and grow through great opportunities. Her developing story goes to show that there’s no substitute for following a dream with passion.

R.J. Duarte- Founder of GreenWorx Landscaping

R.J. Duarte, a nineteen-year-old talented entrepreneur found his light for work. He was accepted into Colorado State University, although he decided not to go. R.J. at nineteen said “College wasn’t for me” and he said this because he had a landscaping business that was bringing in six figures. He said, “I figured I should stick with this” that is so impressive to have your own business that is driving in six figures at such a young age. R.J. started cutting grass at a very young age, he was eight cutting in Golden, Colorado. At the age of eight, he had a unique work ethic that really made his business successful. He was tripling his income every year even at this young age, and in middle school, he and his friend came together so they could cut more lawns. When R.J. was in high school, he named the company GreenWorx. After high school, his friend went to college, and it forced a split between the two. Although, R.J. just took everything back into control, and he saw a lot of room for growth and innovation. Then, he rebranded his company and made it a premium landscaping and maintenance company. Duarte had said a few things on his decision, “It’s higher margins for more risk,” and “That comes with headaches, but without headaches, there’s no reward.” This shows that he had a mind of an entrepreneur, and he was willing to go big or go home and innovate with his company. Now, GreenWorx is up to twelve to fifteen members on staff that is made up of mostly high school students. R.J. definitely made the right decision considering just as of this year, GreenWorx is bringing in right around $750,000! This is just so amazing to see the innovations that R.J. had to make, and the outcome was exactly what he wanted. Finally, Duarte said, “We’re hardworking, blue-collar people,” and “There’s nothing wrong with that.” This is awesome, he and his crew are very comparable, and they make a lot of money doing what they do.