Sean Coughlin is the CEO and one of the co-founders of FaithStreet. FaithStreet is a website that allows newcomers to areas to find and connect with the churches around them. It also allows congregations to reach out using the internet. Currently, FaithStreet has over 17,000 churches across America on their website, and their next goal is developing a simple way to give money to the communities their members serve. Sean’s story for the startup of the company is interesting. He graduated from Harvard College and University of Virginia School of Law, and began working for a top law firm. He left his job however because he felt the need to start something big and new. This success story of going from a law background to a tech startup is inspiring to me. It shows his faith and his willingness to take a leap in it to follow his calling.
Archive for Millennial Enrepreneuers – Page 33
A problem faced by many has just been taken head on by three young entrepreneurs in San Francisco, California. The app started out as an experience one of the co founders experienced during his visit to Chile and saw an immense need for improvement with the poor quality apps being offered and brought to market. This app helps localize mobile apps to translate with people throughout the world. These three tech entrepreneurs recognized that their was a problem and set out to capitalize on it. Common knowledge is that it is hard enough to develop a successful strategy and layout of content in your own country and native language and be successful. The thought of tackling a foreign language and country head on with a total different culture is intimidating and very difficult. A lot of expenses can incur while you try to make a splash in a whole new area. This app they created works to solve this problem and to provide a perfect fitting and existing user interface.
Colatris is ranked one of best current young entrepreneurs businesses in America is setting its aim on dominating the mobile industry. They set their company apart by selling their app as a way to effectively reach an international audience with very little effort and cost. The app allows you to very easily and quickly edit an app to your liking. This easy feature can help catapult your business to a great start in a foreign market with no stupid mistakes; starting your company out with a bad rep. This app personally allowing you to customize your app to your own preferences, setting you up for success! Colatris hopes their once idea, now brought to life, will one day be the standard for localization of digital content everywhere on the globe.
For more great info and a quick video on this great new company: check out the following link!
https://youtu.be/NIRAx5ANjtQ
Before Catherine Cook was an entrepreneur herself it was her brother Dave Cook that was the first entrepreneur in her family. The experience from Dave would end up helping Catherine with her business venture.
Being a new student at her high school Catherine Cook wanted a better way to get to know her classmates. One day Catherine and her brother Dave were flipping through their yearbook and started to brainstorm. After noticing how useless the information was that the yearbook had to offer she decided to do something about it. Catherine looked up to her brother Dave and thought that if he could have a successful start-up company she could to.
Catherine started the online social network website with the name MyYearBook.com. Which today is better known as MeetMe.com. At the time Catherine looked at Facebook and knew that it was a social network for people that you were already friends with. But Catherine’s goal for MeetMe.com was different. Catherine wanted to make a site that was meant for you to make new friends instead of just interacting with the friends you already have.
So through interesting quizzes and games and other aspects of the site Catherine achieved her goal. Catherine Cook is now worth $30 million dollars and MeetMe.com now gains 86,000 new users every day along with 300,000 new photos every day.
Africa?! That’s right, Africa. Forbes Magazine has announced their top 30 under 30 successful entrepreneurs thriving in Africa. Other things dwell in those deserts: innovation and creativity.
1. Mubarak Muyika, 20: Kenya
Orphaned at the age of 10, Mubarak worked hard to be a star student. Turning down an offer from Harvard, he began his journey as an entrepreneur through Hypecentury Technologies, a web hosting technology, which he later sold for a 6 digital price tag. Now, Mubarak spends his time tinkering with his new idea, Zagace. The cloud based software organizes company tasks such as payroll, accounting, and company budgets.
2. Affiong Williams, 29: Nigeria
Founder of Reelfruit, a fruit packaging company focused on packaging and branding local fruits in a safe and reliable way. Reelfruit has made a presence in over 80 supermarkets all over Nigeria and has won 2 awards in the Netherlands and in Nigeria. Affiong pushes herself to the max and hopes to expand Reelfruit internationally.
3. Arthur Zang, 27: Cameroon
Zang noticed the problem of African patients living in rural areas having to travel to urban areas to receive medical attention. Distance can be life or death in a medical emergency. In response, he invents Cardiopad, a medical tablet (like an ipad) that preforms heart examinations much like an ECG. The device then sends the information electronically to medical professionals who can interpret them and suggest treatments. Zang is also the owner and founder of Himore Medical Equipments.
4. Julie Alexander Fourie, 28: South Africa
In his dorm room at the University of Stellenbosch, Julie would repair the small devices of colleagues for fun. With encouragement from his friends, he starts iFix, an organization that fixes all Apple and Samsung smart phones. Today, the company employs 40 people and serves more than 4,000 clients a month.
5. Ludwick Marishane, 25: South Africa
Asked by a friend in High School, “why doesn’t someone invent something that you can put on your skin and then you don’t have to bathe?”, Ludwick invents DryBath, a gel that provides all the effects of a bath without the need for water. Ludwick was later voted the best student entrepreneur in the world by Entrepreneurs Organization and declared one of the most intelligent young brains in the universe by Google.
See all 30 entrepreneurs here: 30 Under 30
Over this past summer, filmmaker and youtuber Casey Neistat and former VP of Engineering for Tumblr, Matt Hacket launched a new app called “Beme”. After working on the project for over a year, the duo was finally ready to release their new format for video sharing.
“Beme” is an app that, according to Neistat and Hackett, captures the unfiltered and genuine moments in life. “Beme” captures videos with the rear camera in four-second bursts by covering an iPhone’s proximity sensor. The screen goes black so users have no way of previewing the content. Viewing others’ content is done via a snapchat like interface where you hold down your finger to play and when the video finishes, it’s gone forever. The app lets you react to other peoples’ content with the iPhone’s front camera by sending a selfie to someone as they watch the video.
So what makes “Beme” different or better than other forms of video sharing, such as Snapchat? Being frustrated by the superficiality of social media today, Neistat feels that “Beme” allows users to consciously capture their life without altering it to make it seem like something that it’s not. With such widespread use of social media, Neistat felt that there needed to be something that could capture life in the most unaffected, candid manner. Neistat states that he loves sharing apps, such as Instagram, but it’s not the right platform to share little photos of what he sees throughout the day, rather it’s a place to share beautifully edited aspects of his life. According to Neistat, social media today is built to share with the world a version of who you are. Now, “Beme” wants you to share who you really are.
Within eight days of release, “Beme” users shared 1.1 million videos and sent 2.4 million reactions. As of now, Neistat and Hackett decided on a slower, invite-only rollout to ensure that each user had at least one friend on the app. The partners said that they hope to upgrade the app’s background soon so that they can do away with invite codes and let anyone join. In addition, while this is currently only available on Apple devices, they are working to develop it into an app for Androids as well.
When researching millennial entrepreneurs there seems to be a connection between all of them. They did not begin a certain business, or create a product to gain revenue from it, but rather they had an idea, and put that idea to work. Consequently it usually ends up that their idea makes them money. But it is just the fact of providing a good or service that seems to drive these people.
Eric Koger and his wife Susan Gregg Koger were two young adults attending Carnegie Mellon University together. They both had a want to create a better way to get vintage and vintage style clothing. They figured that the best way they could accomplish this was through a website. So in 2002 launched the website Mod Cloth. This website went into full time operation by 2006.
While this idea seems menial to many of us today, due to the vast amount of web sites we can access at the touch of a button, In 2006 this was innovative for the service it was providing. Since there take off in 20006 they have moved from the Strip-District in Pittsburgh to San Francisco, where they are based.
A move in location was not the only thing that happened however. A move in the direction of online selling had also been created due to these two college students.
These two young entrepreneurs show me that innovation is a result of a network greater than yourself. Who knows, if Eric Koger didn’t meet Susan, the internet shopping experience may be a little different today.
Maddie Bradshaw is popular on the blog tonight. Like Grace, I researched Bradshaw for this post. I want to talk about her success from a slightly different angle, though. As you might have read from Grace’s awesome post, Maddie Bradshaw is a 16-year-old millionaire. She designs and sells Snap Caps, creative bottle caps that can be worn as jewelry. She has 25 employees and sells over 60,000 necklaces each month.
I found her story particularly interesting because she isn’t selling something that solves a huge, mind-boggling problem. In fact, she’s similar to Apple in that she’s giving people something they didn’t even know they wanted.
So, why are people buying from her? Anyone can make a simple necklace, and many companies do. What sets Bradshaw apart? She presents Snap Caps as the necklace that celebrates and brings out a girl’s unique qualities. Each necklace has a theme, whether fairytale or music or ladybugs or faith. Girls choose the ones they think fit their personality. Just like Zappos, she’s putting a bigger “why” behind a product most people don’t usually think much about.
Her approach fits right into the “conceptual age” idea we were talking about in class. To have a place in the market, products need to be more than just functional. They need to stand for something. Snap Caps stand for uniqueness.
Bradshaw’s success shines far beyond her net worth. She has appeared on multiple TV Shows, like The View and Shark Tank, and has even published her own book, You Can Start a Business, Too. Her biggest piece of advice to young entrepreneurs is to follow your passion. She says, “If you come up with an idea and you love it, chances are other people will, too.” I think people forget this a lot. They don’t work towards something they love because they’re scared it won’t interest others. That has certainly been true for me and many people I know. Bradshaw is a wonderful reminder that you can create a business around any passion. She took the risk most people wouldn’t have and it’s paying off for her in amazing ways.
(Image: The Toggery)
The young businessman that I’m writing about hasn’t struck it rich yet or made it onto any major business website, but he is a perfect example of a Millennial Entrepreneur. Nolan Carroll is a 2013 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, he majored in Information Systems. He is the co-founder of Three and Seven LLC, a Pittsburgh based company that specializes in web site design and development. He helps to run this business while he works at his full time position as a Senior Applications Engineer at a multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in New York City, Medidata Solutions.
This information may seem slightly average to some, but I will explain why Nolan’s story, so far, is anything but average to me.
First, I didn’t mention that Nolan was my neighbor for most of my life, our families are very close and our parents often organize get-togethers with each other. He is someone that I used to play basketball with in the driveway and looked up to for just about everything when I was a child. He is unique because of how driven and creative he is. I remember my brothers going over to his house to see the video games that he had designed and prototyped and hearing from my parents about the various internships that he was getting straight out of high school. He is someone that you can just tell loves technology and truly enjoys working on it, and now he is making money by doing what he loves! I think a true love of what they are doing is something that most successful entrepreneur’s experience.
I am inspired by Nolan’s story for many reasons. He is someone that I’ve know my whole life and it is great to see him really pursuing his goals and aspirations, this really shows me that being a successful entrepreneur is possible no matter your background or your age. It is always cool to read about the ultra-successful young entrepreneurs out there, but it is even better and motivating to see someone you know make their dreams a reality and really go out and get what they want.
Most of us have used Quizlet at some point or another in our student careers. Quizlet goes beyond just flash cards on a mobile devise. It allows teachers and students to study, take practice tests, and play games together in class on mobile devises. This is all to prepare for up coming tests together and help make studying not seem like a chore.
But who was the Entrepreneur who came up brainstormed this technology? It was at the time 15 year old Andrew Sutherland! In October 2005 Andrew had started Quizlet and since then 300,000 people have registered to participate in over 35,000,000 games! So thanks to Andrew there is now a cool way for teachers to interact with their students in the classroom more and help them not feel like studying is a chore.
I think this millennial entrepreneur is an appropriate candidate to be blogged about. At the young age of 29 David Karp is the founder of the blogging platform Tumblr. Now I am sure that many of you have at least heard of it because it currently has close to 50 million users. The founder himself is worth close to $200 million.
I would guess that many of you have heard of Twitter and Facebook which can be considered blogging platforms too but only on a micro-blogging level; compared to the tools meant for blogging such as WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad. Tumblr is meant to be a different kind of blogging platform compared to the others.
Karp intends Tumblr to be a place for blogging with a different feel to it. He believes that the other big blogging platforms are perfectly fine; he just thought they were too difficult to use for people who don’t think of themselves as good writers. So Karp created Tumblr as a tool/environment he thinks will make it easier and more meaningful for people to share their thoughts and ideas.
Karp created Tumblr for the people that don’t really enjoy writing but want to share their thoughts and ideas through images, words, and videos in a place they can feel comfortable. A place where people can build an online identity and be proud of what they built.