Jay Alvarrez was bor
n on the beautiful island of Hawaii and raised by parents who always supported him. When Alvarrez was just 14, his mother passed away. She had an incredible impact on his life and taught him how to love others well. After her death, Jay got the phrase “let’s live” tattooed on the inside of his bottom lip, a memento he lives by and will never forget. After his mother’s tragic death, Alvarrez made the decision to drop out of high school and live the life he knew his mother wanted for him. He began experimenting with film, and started to document his adrenalin including adventures, capturing beautiful footage of his experiences and travels. Posting these incredible videos to social media, Alvarrez began to accumulate quite a following. This was the beginning of his path to stardom. Producing increasingly impressive content, Alvarrez’s work began to catch the eyes of companies such as Calvin Klein, Bonds Swimwear, and Hyundai and participated in high paying advertisements, and sponsorships. These new sources of income blessed Jay with more opportunities to travel the world and build a brand of himself. This is how Jay Alvarrez is an entrepreneur. He wisely gripped his wide array of talents and turned them into an outstanding source of income. His fashion and self-developed trends have spread across the world, and he has inspired million to go out into the world and go live. This is a perfect example of a rags-to-riches situation. He was handed nothing, and became a self-made millionaire. 
Fast forward to the present, Alvarrez boasts a hefty 5.9 million followers on Instagram, he has travelled the world several times over, and is now a designer and primary ambassador for DoucheBags, a luggage business whose mission is to create “Better journeys through smarter travel gear”. Learn from this and apply it to your life. Recognize the areas that you have been blessed in and use that to your advantage. Use your gifts to help other people and you might make a little money in the process.
Archive for Millennial Enrepreneuers – Page 19
Liz Forkin Bohannon founded Sseko in 2010 and took the business idea to Shark Tank. The business left Shark Tank with no investors but realized that they believed in the traditional form of philanthropy. The investors of Shark Tank, according to Liz Forkin Bohannon,
Sseko means laughter in Lugandan, this is seen through Sseko’s mission. Sseko’s mission is to break the cycle of poverty in Uganda and create opportunities for women to pursue higher education. Sseko has sent one hundred and six women to college through their program and plan to send many more. The company also partners with local artisans in Uganda and create transparency between the customer and the company. Liz Forkin Bohannon says that Sseko seeks to create a new standard of transparency and connection between the customer and who made the product.
Sseko has been featured in Vogue and Cosmopolitan as well as Shark Tank and been seen on numerous celebrities. The goal for growth in 2015 has obviously been a success. The brand is booming and sending their largest class to college. Sseko shows how setbacks, like leaving Shark Tank without an investor, can still lead to great things. Sseko is completing their mission of sending women to higher education. Liz Forkin Bohannon’s perseverance is something that all entrepreneurs need and she is a great example of pushing through despite setbacks.
https://vimeo.com/36069709
Meet Gabe Blanchet and Jamie Byron, cofounders and CEOs of Grove Labs. Those that live in the city tend to struggle growing their own food or finding locally grown and organic foods. This is because cities are so full of building after building that there is no room for anyone to make there own gardens or for farmers to use land to farm. Grove Labs is trying to solve this problem.
Grove Labs has developed a device that lets you grow fruits and vegetables hydroponically. The entire setup includes the hydroponic chamber and the mobile app that lets you keep track of the growing conditions. It will also link up to vendors to replenish your materials. Best of all the unit blends in to your kitchen decor and appliances.
Before they could even developed this amazing product they have had to raise funding, so they asked family and friends, as well as took part in the MIT Global Founders’ Skills Accelerator and raised $120,000 to help start there concept. After presenting at an event called R/GA’s demo day they raised another $2 million in funding. Since raising this money they have been able to set up their own office outside of Boston. They aim to manufacture in house on a small scale, but right now they are still in the product development phase. It is amazing to see the many new kinds of inventions that young entrepreneurs are coming up with and creating. Helping make solutions to current problems a reality.
Who knew that a pair of brother-sister millennial entrepreneurs could create a multi-million dollar business by the ripe ages of 14 and 25? Geoff and Catherine Cook of New Hope, Pennsylvania, built a website called MyYearbook from the ground up – and they did this while Catherine was still in high school. In 2002, when their family decided to make the move to New Hope, Catherine was extremely interested in making new friends at her new high school. One day, she was flipping through the pages of her yearbook when she realized that this was not the most efficient way to make new friends. She thought if only there was an online yearbook where she could reach out to people who did not already know her, but who were interested in making new friends as well. She brought the idea up to her already successful brother who had recently graduated from Harvard and had sold a few of his own companies, and he jumped right on board. He invested a whopping $250,000 and stepped in as CEO. These siblings launched what would become one of the nation’s most-trafficked websites from the comfort of their parents’ home. Within the first week of its launch, 400 users had already signed up and were avidly using the site. After reaching out to investors and focusing on branding their company as “MySpace for high school”, Catherine and Geoff were able to hire a team of engineers to expand their company even further. In 2011, MyYearBook merged with Quespasa – a $100 million deal – that allowed them to reach an even larger Brazilian and Mexican audience, with the new name of: MeetMe. Through this deal, they were able to take their website worldwide and affect millions of people around the globe.
Catherine and Geoff Cook are exemplary millennial entrepreneurs because they started with a simple idea, and through hard work and dedication, they were able to create a world-wide business out of their parents’ home. They were motivated and dedicated, a combination that would drive them to succeed and achieve even more than they could have imagined. Catherine had a vision and at the age of 14 was able to pursue her dreams by pushing every limit and overcoming every stereotype that tried to hinder her. She did not allow her age to stop her, nor did she allow the opinions of others at her new school to impede her goals. She simply worked countless hours, contacted the right people, and most importantly never gave up.
I believe Catherine and Geoff’s story is inspiring and can teach many lessons. Their passion and persistence led them to astounding success and drove them to continually innovate their idea. Catherine talked to other students every day while Geoff networked online to truly see what others though of their site. They constantly critiqued, tweaked, and pivoted their idea based on their target audience’s desires so that MyYearbook became one of the most popular social networking sites in the world.
This has taught me the importance of continuous improvement. I believe that products and ideas can always be improved. As society changes and technology, stereotypes, and expectations change along with it, companies need to constantly develop their products. Even a successful product can always be improved because improvement leads to more success. This is a concept that I intend to bring into the products and businesses that I create both now and in the future.
In the exploding world of novel technologies, drones have captured many people’s attention. Drones combine ease, stability, and a small learning curve with speed, agility, and often video capability that takes RC enthusiasts to new heights and gives creators new ways to capture footage.
One company rising in through the crowded pool of drone products is Teal. Teal was founded by George Matus when he was 18. Drones caught George’s eye when he was in middle school and he began to tinker, fly, and come up with a wish list for features not yet available in drones of the time. Now Matus is 18 and with $2.8 million in seed funding he has launched Teal into the sky of drone production. Teal and George Matus work as a perfect example of pure passion driving a business to profitability.
This is young man is Cory Nieves, he is now 14 years old, and he began his own b
usiness at the age of six.
One day Cory proclaimed that he was tired of riding the bus to school, and that he wanted to buy a car. Like every parent, his mother said to save up for own and buy one on his own. That is what he began to do. He originally started selling hot cocoa around where he lived and Cory’s mother noticed how dedicated and persistent Cory was and encouraged that he should begin raising funds for college. He then expanded his sales to lemonade and cookies.
Cory’s business is Mr. Cory’s Cookie and he has perfected the chocolate chip cookie recipe as well as other classic cookie flavors. He has moved his business online and has reached out to many major establishments such as Bloomingdales and Macy’s for publicity, as well as working with non-profit organizations like Children’s Aid Society.
Cory Nieves is truly a talented young individual with so much potential. He has a goal oriented and dedicated mine that is shown through how he began his career. All Cory wanted was to buy himself a car and if he can make a startup business from a child like wish the possibilities that he will accomplish in the future are grander and closer than Cory knows. We should harness such dedication in order to achieve our goals.
Veterati
Beginnings
The Problem and Solution
Success
Personal Opinion
Snapchat, the social media app with over 300 million active monthly users, had its humble beginnings in the dorm rooms of three college students. While studying product design at Stanford, Evan Spiegel proposed a temporary message app as part of a class project. The idea was met with ridicule from fellow classmates. However, later that year Spiegel along with classmates Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown, worked to create a prototype of the idea. Initially called Picaboo, the project was later renamed Snapchat and received significant popularity in 2012. By the end of 2012 the app had reached over 1 million active daily users. Spiegel describes the company’s mission statement as, “Snapchat isn’t about capturing the traditional Kodak moment. It’s about communicating with the full range of human emotion — not just what appears to be pretty or perfect.” Snapchat seeks to differ from other major social media platforms by reducing the stress of having personal information stored on a profile.
Despite ridicule and discouragement from fellow classmates, Spiegel persisted with an idea that he felt had potential. He acted on that idea and is now the worlds youngest billionaire. His story is inspiring in many ways, but particularly in his passion for something that was seen by others as foolish. While there is certainly wisdom in taking the advice of others, some of the best ideas in history were initially met with ridicule. Perseverance in situations such as these can be inspiring.
Two young men named Ben Cogan and Jesse Horwitz have completely disrupted the contact industry with their contact delivery service, Hubble Contacts. For just $30 a month the company will send you fresh daily contacts in the mail. Think Harry’s Razors but for contacts. The contacts are produced by St. Shine and are FDA approved. The reason the company can get you fresh daily contacts for so cheap is because they have skipped the middle man and go direct to consumer.
Ben grew up in New York City and worked as a Senior Customer Insights Associate at Harry’s where he “helped to build the Customer Insights Team where I surveyed and interviewed customers, modeled new business opportunities”. Jesse also grew up in New York and invested his own money in private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, and real estate. Both met at Bridgewater in the summer of 2011. After they met Ben spent time on the Hubble idea and with input from his fellow workers at Harry’s made the move to start the company and called Jesse for help in the start up.
Hubble Contacts has had wild success because they are the first direct to consumer contact lens brand that is both affordable and high quality. They are able to achieve there affordability part of their business model by having the direct to consumer business model and they also take less than a 80% margin that most company’s in the industry are at. As of 2017 the Hubble team has acquired more than 20,000 customers.
Article: https://ownersmag.com/hubble-contacts-ben-cogan-jesse-horwitz-interview/
Andrea Sreshta and Anna Stork were just two ordinary grad students pursuing their degrees at Columbia University when they had a “bright” idea. In 2010 while they were still in school, a terrible earthquake hit Haiti. One of their class assignments was to develop and design a product that would aid in the relief of this struggling nation. Thus, LuminAID was born.
These solar powered lanterns solved a massive problem which is commonly over looked in relief efforts. The under-developed state of Haiti already suffered from its lack of electric lighting. However, especially in times of crisis good lighting is a necessity and Sreshta and Stork noticed this gap and optimized its potential. Their first prototype was made after several hours of tinkering. The next three weeks of their class was spent refining the idea. Once they saw the amazing potential for the product they filed for a patent.
This brilliant duo teamed up with several relief teams in Haiti and tested out their new idea. It was an absolute success and proven to get the job done. The LuminAID was so successful they decided to start a real for-profit company selling them for commercial and recreational use. Their market development strategy has caught a lot of traction and the LuminAID lantern has shown stunning growth. Officially back by Mark Cuban from Shark tank, The LuminAID team is well on their way to impacting the world and making people rethink lighting.