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Archive for Millennial Enrepreneuers – Page 32

Syed Balkhi

Posted by Lindy Bowser

· Tuesday, November 10th, 2015

· 1 Comment

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We all know the importance of story, well, Syed has a story worth reading. Everything he needed to develop his entrepreneurial skills simply fell into place. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Syed started his first business making greeting cards for a Muslim holiday at the age of 7. With the funds coming from his mom, he was able to triple her investment within the first month. Loving this, Syed began selling flags for Pakistan’s Independence Day celebration- also, profitable. However, he was not satisfied with selling just seasonal products. At the age of 9 he opens his own snack shop with his neighbor gaining extremely high profits. When he turns 12, his life is flipped upside down- his family immigrates to the United States.

With a whole new culture, language, and home, Syed found it extremely difficult making friends. In his spare time, he began gaming. During lunch when all the other kids were socializing, Syed would sit in the library playing games. But, because school is prison, the firewalls blocked majority of his favorite websites. He began toying around with codes and sketchy back doors to avoid the security walls. The other kids started to notice Syed playing all the popularly blocked games and he saw the opportunity. His web directories spread like wildfire as he began to develop his own web development business.

Skip a few awkward years, Syed attends the University of Florida. During his 4 years there he realizes he could not keep up with the demands of his online business. So, he migrates all his clients to WordPress sites. Next thing he knows, people are asking him about how to maneuver WordPress. To answer all the questions, he creates WPBeginner- the largest free WP resource site.

After college he continues innovating in the online world. List25, OptinMonster, Themelab, and Envira Gallery- to name a few. Looking at the big picture, if Syed had not moved to the states he would have never had issues with making friends, he would have never sat in the library during lunch, and he would have never become the web developer he is today. The story itself is inspiring, but the components of the story are what make Syed’s life special. We may not all be born entrepreneurs, but we

can remember that for every challenge we face, there is always an opportunity.

To hear his web wisdom:

1 Comment

Categories : Millennial Enrepreneuers, Online Companies, Technology, Websites

Palmer Luckey

Posted by Dan Dorman

· Tuesday, November 10th, 2015

· 3 Comments

If you’re familiar with the gaming world then you should know that most of the time you are using some type of controller and you are looking at some type of screen as you play. Well the 21-year-old video game fan, Palmer Luckey, plans on changing the way games are played in a new and interesting way. He is managing to do so with his invention called the Oculus rift.

Luckey is working on perfecting his invention with the company he founded called Oculus VR. Now as I have stated before the usual gaming equipment are controllers and televisions. With Luckeys Oculus Rift he plans to immerse players into a virtual reality. The Oculus Rift itself is a virtual reality headset that displays the game being played directly in front of your eyes. Now what else is cool about this headset is that with every movement you make with your head it affects the way you see the game. For example, say that you physically rotate your head as if you were looking to the right and then left; the headset will monitor these movements and translate them into the game.

Luckey has already received endorsements from big name gaming companies such as Valve and id Software and has raised over $91 million dollars in funding for the Oculus Rift. With all this attention and funding who knows what the future of gaming has in store for this innovative and cool product the Oculus Rift.

3 Comments

Categories : Millennial Enrepreneuers, Millennial Entrepreneurs, Sci Fi Inspiration, Technology, Toys

Blue Apron: A better way to cook

Posted by Lizzie Parsons

· Monday, November 9th, 2015

· 1 Comment

In 2011, investment firm associate, Matt Salzberg, and his computer programmer friend, Ilia Papas, decided that they wanted to create a business. After quitting their jobs, they tried to establish several different start-ups, but they were all unsuccessful. It wasn’t until they drew upon their combined love of food and cooking that they found success. As Salzberg stated, they both “liked trying new ingredients, new recipes, new techniques, but [they] found it really inaccessible to cook at home. It was expensive, it was time-consuming and it was difficult to find recipes that [they] trusted.”

Blue Apron

Their company, Blue Apron, named after the aprons French chef apprentices wear, was able to solve these common problems associated with cooking and trying new recipes. Blue Apron develops delicious new gourmet recipes for its subscribers to try and creates videos on how to make the recipe. The ingredients needed to make the meal are measured and sent to the user so there is no waste involved. All of the food comes delivered that day in refrigerated boxes. Some examples of recipes for this week are North African-spiced shrimp and couscous or mushroom brown butter cavatelli – food most people wouldn’t dare try to make on their own. Check out their website and other menu options here !

Salzberg and Papas had no experience in the food industry, so they enlisted the help of a family friend, Matthew Wadiak. Wadiak had worked as a wholesaler of truffles and avocados and was familiar with the food industry. He became Blue Apron’s food expert and COO, while Salzberg became the CEO and Papas the chief technical officer. This diverse founding team was key to the company’s success. Each person had very different backgrounds and talents, which allowed the company to pursue more opportunities early in the founding process. It also allowed them to access very different networks in which to market their idea.

Since its start with only some family and friends as customers, Blue Apron has expanded significantly. They now ship more than 5 million meals per month across the United States! After being in business for only 3 years, Blue Apron is worth more than a billion dollars! Clearly, they were able to identify a common problem and provide an easy (and delicious!) solution!

1 Comment

Categories : eCommerce, Food, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Online Companies, Websites

“Water” You Waiting For?

Posted by Zach Berry

· Saturday, October 31st, 2015

· 6 Comments

When he was just eleven, Richie Stachowski found his family’s vacation to Hawaii frustrating as he couldn’t speak to his father while they were snorkeling. Such an awful problem to have, right? That evening, after their snorkeling adventure, he began drawing designs and ended up spending his $267 of savings to build a prototype underwater megaphone. Richie’s product, appropriately named the Water Talkie, was built using a small plastic cone, a blow valve and a mouthpiece, allowing swimmers to talk to each other under water.

This completely solved his problem of not being able to talk to his father underwater! The young inventor patented his invention and started Short Stack LLC, a company name inspired by his love for pancakes.

The young entrepreneur took a few days off school to present Toys “R” Us with his idea and was shocked when he received an order for 50,000 units! Other retailers, including K-Mart and Walmart, soon followed, and his Water Talkies were the hit of the summer of 1997, netting Richie’s company around $500,000 in revenue.

Three years after inventing the Water Talkie, Richie sold his company and the rights to produce his inventions to Wild Planet Toys in San Francisco. This company then went on to produce more exciting underwater products like a pool pogo stick, underwater binoculars, and Pool Peepers- swim masks that make a child appear to be an animal or creature of some sort when coming out of the water. All Richie’s inventions are still available in stores as well! Maybe we can all get some Water Talkies and have our Elevator Pitches underwater next year!

Richie Stachowski’s journey as an inventor is an inspiration to all of us, proving that creativity, simplicity and fun are a good foundation for successful product ideas.

6 Comments

Categories : Great Ideas, Millennial Enrepreneuers

A Millionaire High School Dropout

Posted by Alan Brennen

· Friday, October 30th, 2015

· 3 Comments

Some of the wealthiest business men have dropped out of school at early ages. From Richard Branson (16) to David Karp (11) to even Benjamin Franklin (10) are included on this list and we all know that they turned out to be okay in life! Taso Du Val has just added his name to this prestigious list of early dropouts to riches. Taso Du Val is a software savant who has had a passion for technology from a very early age in his life.

Taso entered the workforce and joined a startup called Fotolog (business dealing with photo-sharing) as a lead engineer. After Fotolog was bought for $100 million in 2007 he joined another business startup as a lead engineer at Mark Levchin’s company (co-founder of PayPal) called Slide, which was bought by Google in 2010 for $228 million. Du Val, without a doubt, had some early luck and success landing prestigious positions in startups with not much of an academic background that gave him some key foundations for the challenges he will set out to accomplish in the future.

Du Val is currently helping other engineers land great jobs, as well as building his very own multimillion-dollar startup he helped co-found called TopTal. TopTal is based out of San Francisco and connects freelance software developers with businesses in need of programming expertise, rigorously screening applicants and making matches based on each client’s unique project demands and related factors like workplace culture.

Du Val’s story relates a lot to our class as our professor frequently stresses the concept of identifying a problem and thinking of a solution. Du Val recognized there was a problem and heard many complaints about the other players in the game and sought out to capitalize on it. There was a need and an opportunity that had yet to be met. Entrepreneurship cant exactly be taught and is hardwired into very few people. Some people are just naturally gifted with business smarts and others have to work harder to come by it.

The most important lesson to be learned by his story, no matter what your education or background is, just getting out there and doing it is the most important thing.

3 Comments

Categories : Great Ideas, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Uncategorized, Youngest Entrepreneurs

Chalk it Up

Posted by Lindy Bowser

· Wednesday, October 28th, 2015

· 3 Comments

William Zhou, born in 1992, always assumed a teacher’s job was easy. They taught out of the book, handed out papers, and had three months of the year to lay on the beach. Not too bad, right? He began observing his high school teacher’s lesson planning and grading of papers when he noticed how not so simple it was to run a classroom. He first creates Planboard to help lesson planning easier. Extremely successful, Planboard later wins $25,000 from the University of Waterloo Velocity Venture Fund and a partnership with Ontario Teachers’ Federation. With a growing user fan base, Zhou expands the service to Chalk.com, a Microsoft-like software tool for teacher collaboration, lesson planning, and assessment.

Chalk.com aims to make it easier on teachers to provide a beneficial learning place. The goal is to encourage a personalized education for student success. Browsing on their site, it is easy to pick up on how youthful the service is. All the company leaders are under the age of 40 and along the side of the page are quotes of co-founders Zhou and Fleming who have experienced the power of education through amazing teachers and family members. Just out of school themselves, these leaders know first-hand the work that goes into a great classroom lesson.

Students complain all the time (especially in high school) about not getting a grade back fast enough. We groan and whine at our teachers asking juvenile questions like, “What else do you have to do during the year? You have the entire summer off!” Zhou thought the same thing, until he started exploring. If Zhou had not looked closer at what a teacher does to create a great classroom atmosphere, he would have never noticed the struggle teachers go through on a daily basis. Chalk.com looks to lighten the burden of lesson planning, grading, and assessing through an easy-to use software system approved by over 20,000 schools worldwide.

See Chalk.com

3 Comments

Categories : Education, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Online Companies, Youngest Entrepreneurs

Harvard Student and Entreprenuer

Posted by Erin Sixt

· Tuesday, October 27th, 2015

· 4 Comments

Olenka Polak, a daughter of polish immigrants, would frequently find herself at the movie theatre with her family. She and her brother, who had grown up in the states and knew English, understood exactly what was going on in the movie. Her parents, on the other hand, really struggled to enjoy their experience at the cinema due to the language barrier.

During Polak’s time at Harvard, she decided to pursue the solution to this problem. myLINGO allows for non-English speakers to listen and understand a movie in their own language. All you have to do is download myLINGO on a smart phone and bring a pair of headphones to the theatre. Once you’re at the cinema you select the movie you are seeing and the language you want to listen to the film in.

At age nineteen, Polak chose to take time off from Harvard to grow and develop this business. She was featured in Forbes “30 under 30” and seems to be growing into a quite the success story.

We all have something to learn from Polak. Whether it’s her recognition of a problem, or her ambition to leave Harvard and pursue her dreams, she is an inspiration to us all.

4 Comments

Categories : App, Great Ideas, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Technology, Uncategorized

Sword & Plough – Bridging the Civil-Military Divide

Posted by Lizzie Parsons

· Sunday, October 25th, 2015

· 4 Comments

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Emily Núñez and her sister Betsy Núñez grew up in a military family, so for them, living on military bases and eating Thanksgiving dinner with hundreds of soldiers in a military mess hall was the norm. However, when Emily went to Middlebury College, she realized the huge divide between military life and civilian life. Most of her friends had never met someone in the military and had no idea what military life was like. During this time, both Emily and Betsy began to realize how difficult it was for veterans to find work as they transitioned from military to civilian life.

These two problems culminated into a business idea when Emily attended a social entrepreneurship symposium at her college, where the speaker talked about incorporating up-cycling into a business. Emily had the idea of recycling military surplus into fashionable bags and accessories. Emily quickly brought her sister, Betsy, on board and Sword & Plough was born. The name, Sword & Plough comes from the phrase “to turn swords into ploughshares” from the book of Isaiah. For Emily and Betsy, this means taking military technologies and materials and applying them to peaceful, military applications.

Every stage of their business (from design, to production, to quality control, to sales) is done in the U.S.A. and done by veterans. They even buy their supplies from companies owned and operated by veterans. Emily and Betsy want their company to empower veterans and help in their transition back to civilian life. They donate 10% of their profits to support veterans. They also want to have their bags be a conversation starting point to strengthen military-civilian understanding and to bring to light veteran issues. In fact, on their website, they have a “Wall of Heroes” to feature a different military personnel every week.

So far, Emily and Betsy’s idea has been a huge success. They’ve been featured on shows like Good Morning America and the Today Show, and on sites like Business Insider and Forbes. I encourage you to check out their website (click here!) to learn more about Sword & Plough, its products, and its mission. I think that this company is poised to make some really important impacts in the near future.

4 Comments

Categories : Apparel/Accessories, Great Ideas, Military, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Online Companies, Recycling, Social Entrepreneur, Upcycling, Websites

The Friends You Have on Facebook Really Do Matter

Posted by Erin Sixt

· Monday, October 19th, 2015

· 4 Comments

When Evita Robinson graduated from college, she identified herself as an artist, hoping to one day be an entrepreneur. As a new graduate, she started traveling. Paris, Tokyo, and Thailand were all places she had visited by the time she was 25. During her worldly adventures, Robinson, like many other millennials, shared her adventures with social media. Soon, she decided to create a group of a few friends she had on Facebook, in order to connect city people to a travel lifestyle. This small group she had created blew up and led to the formation of her business, Nomadness Travelers Tribe.

Nomadness Travelers Tribe is known as, “‘the first group to spearhead targeting diverse millennial travel,”‘ says Robinson. This group is comprised mostly of African American women, living in cities around the world. Some are in poverty, while others experience lavish lifestyles. Yet, they are connected with a love for travel.

Nomadness creates a family between its members with conferences, meetings, and trips that happen worldwide. The trips that this organization puts together are created for the rich and poor through different selling points based on your economical status. To prove just how popular these vacations are Nomadnessx, one travel experience they offer, has an average sell out time of 5 minutes.

Robinson proves how a passion for something, coupled with technology can, in fact, create a business. She says, ‘”If the Internet was a geographic location, Facebook would be the capital. It is where everyone is. If you can start someplace where everyone is and then push out from that point, you have the opportunity to do something special.”‘ Even though her enterprise came to her on accident, she is still a success story. She created a specific environment for a niche audience that has become extremely popular, all through social media.

4 Comments

Categories : Great Ideas, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Technology, Uncategorized

PopCap Games

Posted by Zach Berry

· Monday, October 19th, 2015

· 4 Comments

In 2000, John Vechey founded what is now one of the most popular computer video game creators of all time. With the introduction of Steam, an online platform that provides users with installation and automatic updating of games on computers, community features such as friends lists, and even cloud-saving capabilities, the PC gaming industry is being revolutionized right before our eyes.

Beginning on August 30, 2006, 17 of PopCap’s products became available via Steam. In keeping with PopCap tradition, each PopCap game offered through Steam is available for a free trial period as well as for purchase. Some of PopCap’s most popular games include Bejeweled, Chuzzle, Peggle, and Plants vs. Zombies. These titles became so popular that on July 12, 2011, Electronic Arts (EA) announced it was buying PopCap for $650 million with an additional $100 million stock option.

PopCap’s leading title Bejeweled has sold more than $50 million units across all major platforms including PlayStation, Xbox, Wii, iPhone, and Android. Now, the business is a part of EA Games and the creator, John Vechey, is worth over $60 million. This just goes to show that no matter who you are, you can come into any industry with your creative ideas and make an impact.

Check out PopCap Games at popcap.com

4 Comments

Categories : Millennial Enrepreneuers, Technology