J
essica Alba is a well-known address who recently ventured into entrepreneurship. Several years ago, she was pregnant with her first child and as most new parents do she researched how to make her home baby safe. After one load of laundry, which she washed in “baby-safe” laundry detergent, she broke out in a rash. She thought,” If I had such a bad allergic reaction, I knew it couldn’t be good for my baby. So, I set out to educate myself.” After months of research, she saw there was a social injustice that the average family couldn’t easily find or purchase healthy products. So, she created Honest.com to make a better world for her children and other families. Today, the Honest Company sells everything from household cleaners to makeup. Jessica Alba saw a way that she could make a difference for healthier and safer families and used this as her motivation to create the Honest Company. Today, her role in the company is the visionary leader. She also guides overall strategy, creative marketing, and product innovation.
Archive for Millennial Enrepreneuers – Page 24
Jack Kim is a young entrepreneur that is still in high school in Seattle. He is the founder of a search engine called Benelab that is designed to make philanthropy easier by generating donations. Jack’s project is not-for-profit and he plans to donate all of the revenue generated by Benelab. Jack quickly learned the power of a search engine’s ability to generate wealth from very little traffic through his work with search engines in the past. After developing an outline for his idea, Jack got a team of his high school classmates together to start working on the project. So far, Benelab has been incredibly successful at generating wealth, and all of this wealth is then donated to different charities and organizations to help the less fortunate. Benelab provides an easy yet effective way of enabling everday internet users to participate in philanthropy, even if they do not realize it.
“Many people think of charity as something limited to the rich or “good”, but in reality it’s something that can and should be incorporated into anyone’s daily life – you just have to know how.” – Jack Kim
Spotify or Apple Music?
Answer: Spotify
Spotify has been around for many years, but it especially rose to dominance in the last few years. However, it hasn’t always been success and diamonds for the two Swedish founders and entrepreneurs, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon.
Once upon a time (back in 2005), they were two guys fiddling and working on the development of Spotify from Ek’s apartment. It was so hot inside because of all the servers running– and the two founders were said that they were forced to sit around half-naked to avoid sweating to their death.
But let’s back up.
Daniel Ek has always had an unparalleled love for music… and technology. The young Swedish boy was without a biological father in his life and was given the chance to combine music and technology in his studies at secondary school. After completing IT college where he graduated with top grades, he landed a job at Europe’s largest advertisement company and rapidly became successful. At that age, 23, he was financially independent, owned a red Ferrari Modena, and owned a VIP card to the hottest clubs in Stockholm, Sweden. Source
Today we live in a world where the apparel industry is more prevalent than ever. The rise in fashion has made it so that you could purchase a shirt anywhere from $10 to $1000 and the market just keeps expanding. In order to supply the heavy demand placed on clothing, the apparel industry employs many people from every corner of the world.
However, many of these workers, especially in third world countries, are being paid extremely low wages.On average, only 2.5% of the wholesale price of apparel goes to all workers who construct the products in the developing world.
Michael recognized the exploitation that occured so frequently in this industry and decided to act on his compassion for these people. Michael along with others started a company called Restoration Apparel Co. Restoration Apparel Co. strives to lift the lives of workers and restore dignity to the apparel manufacturing industry through living wage job creation and its Wage Restitution Allowance give-back program. It offers factory direct access to dye sublimated, screen printed, and embroidered sportswear while providing its customers peace-of-mind regarding the production of their products.
I admire this entrepreneur for his compassion and selfless heart. And unlike so many other people, this entrepreneur chose to act on his compassion by supplying a better paying job for people who are stuck in their poverty.
Seth Berkowitz is the founder of Insomnia Cookies. As a college student, at the Univer
sity of Pennsylvania, a lot of his friends were finding investment banking internships, but Seth wanted a different career path. As a student, Berkowitz baked the first batch of cookies himself, and started giving away samples on Penn’s Locust Walk; the cookies became an instant success. His friends even said they would pay for him to deliver the cookies. Within a couple of years, Berkowitz received FDA approval, set up his first retail shop in New York, and found angel investors. today, Insomnia Cookies is a chain of bakeries that specialize in delivering warm cookies, especially late at night. His target market is college students, especially because they could spread the word about the business on campus. Today, Insomnia Cookies has over 100 locations, especially in college towns. Berkowitz wasn’t intimidated by the fact that most restaurants and food service companies end up failing. He was a risk taker and was not afraid to forge his own career path, which clearly paid off.
Just before the Ipad 2 came out, a young university student named Garrett Gee had the hunch that there would be blog posts all over the web listing the top 10 apps for the new device. Garrett then came up with the idea that there should be much easier QR code software and apps to use with the new device. Because Garrett felt that he was on to something, he go to work immediately.Had to act quickly to be the first to implement his idea. After quickly getting an Ipad 2 into the hands of his ios developer, Garrett spent two sleepless nights developing his service before it was completed. He named his app Scan and recruited two fellow classmates to help develop the service further and it was finally launched in February of 2011. In the first year, Scan earned over 10 million downloads and made over 1.5 million dollars from venture capitalists such as Google Ventures.
In class we have talked about how many ideas originally stem from a lucky hunch like Garrett’s. When a hunch is taken seriously, it can lead to big ideas and successful accomplishments like the scan application. Hunches are able to develop by clashing with other people’s ideas and hunches. After getting the input of his two fellow classmates, Garrett’s hunch was improved and transformed into the extremely successful idea of Scan.
SparkVision – Igniting Advocates
SparkVision is a business that helps other businesses, such as associations, corporates, non-profit businesses, and more. Seeking to build a healthy, thriving, environment for team members and employees, SparkVision helps businesses connect their members through interpersonal connection.
“The end result?
Teams that are better able and more willing to
collaborate, empathize,
and achieve together.”
http://www.sparkvisionnow.com/life-lens/
MaryBeth Hyland, founder of SparkVision, didn’t always have a vision.
Growing up, she suffered abuse from her father, who told her that she was never going to amount to anything. The abuse that she endured from her parent has stayed with her throughout the rest of her life– it still affects her to this day– and she has a hard time coping with “success.”
However, using the pain and emotional abuse she experienced has led her to gain insight into minds of others. She is able to empathize and connect with others. Her past experiences has allowed her to culminate a business that is centered around connecting with others.
While I had not heard of SparkVision until recently, I find it inspiring that Hyland used her past experiences to cultivate a business that would give others the emotional connection and benefits that she never had. She ensures that business organizations would have teams full of connection– because where there is connection, there is purpose, and the organization thrives from happy, connected members.
Warby Parker has reimagined the eyewear industry as the first company to introduce affordable eyewear that can be purchased online. The company offers prescription eyeglasses for a flat $95 and has a number of stylish options. Customers can order a number of different eyeglasses, try them on at home, and return the pairs that they do not want. The idea started with a simple question. Why are glasses not sold online? Founder, Neil Blumenthal asked that question so he recruited three friends and Warby Parker was born. However, the company ran into problems early on. Forty-eight hours after the website had launched, it had to be taken down because they received so many orders. The website did not indicate when a product sold out which led to a 20,000 person wait list. Eventually, they sorted out their website issues and are currently making waves in the industry.
This company peaked my interest because of Warby Parker’s ability to recognized gaps in the marketplace. Currently, Luxottica has a near monopoly in the eyeglasses industry. While Luxottica controls the brick-and-mortar sales, they do not address the online market. Neil Blumenthal saw that gap in the market and was able to capitalize on it. However, the problem he solved wasn’t complicated, it was simple. Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest.
“You cannot teach creativity; all you can do is let it blossom, and it blossoms in play.” Recognizing that children can build motor skills, creativity, sharing, and even fractions and scale simply though play, Tegu set forth on a mission to create a toy with hidden lessons. The wooden building blocks come in various shapes, all of which are set to a 30mm scale so as to i
nsure that they all work with one-another, are designed with strategically placed magnets on the inside completely concealed from sight. With this cool feature, children can use the blocks to build animals, cars, houses and much more. However this is not the most compelling fact about Tegu.
The company is based out of Honduras and has quite a unique story. Setting it apart from both charity’s and multi-million dollar company’s, Tegu took a unique approach to starting their business. While most companies think of ways they can make money 
and a desired product, and charities think of ways to help people, Tegu does both. When Chris and Will Haughey, the founders of Tegu, were starting their business they began by asking the question “Could we create a for-profit company based in Honduras that would foster a positive social impact through its business?” They began by finding an issue, framing it, and working from there. The issue was not the lack of an innovative magnetic building blocks however. The issue the brothers discovered was 30% unemployment in a struggling economy in South America.
Tegu could have built their thriving company in America, closer to friends, family, and their primary market, but that was not their mission. The factory in Honduras is self-sustaining and employs otherwise jobless Hondurans giving them the chance to make a living and earn promotions. Tegu discovered a new way of charity combined with business and they are thriving. They were the first of their kind, making them the best of their kind, and they are proving it.
Convoy is a new company that is like Uber for Freight companies. It allows shipping companies to get connected with local truckers to avoid large fees from brokers. It helps both sides to set their own terms and getting a service at a reasonable price.
This is a really nice things for the trucking industry because it will make the ease of contacting local drivers much more easily and efficiently. Since the industry is so large it is important that it work well. Many times people overlook this type of industry because it isn’t the most apparent to everyday life and isn’t the most appealing.
The founder Dan Lewis really has a step up on others trying to get into this industry because he is an ex-Amazon executive. This means he has all of the connections with old Amazon engineers as well as other big businesses that can trust his work. Also, because of his past position he has a lot of trust from investors and they have high hopes that the company will succeed.
The company is up and coming but is growing very quickly and is expected to grow outside the trucking industry as well.
