Archive for Online Companies – Page 3

What the Hecht?

Jared Hecht is a millennial entrepreneur that changed the way the world communicates and made a significant impact in the startup space. In 2009, he graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Political Science. Straight out of Columbia, at the ripe age of 22, the young entrepreneur founded startup messaging platform GroupMe. A little over a year after its official launch, GroupMe was sold to Skype in 2011 for $80 million and Hecht began working for Microsoft, who later acquired Skype. In 2015, Hecht was named to the Forbes “30 under 30” list for his entrepreneurial impact.

Though extremely rewarding, it wasn’t always easy for the young entrepreneur to see the light at the end of the startup tunnel. “Some nights you are on top of the world and think you’re building the best thing ever, and then other nights you think that some horrible competitor is going to knock you off the face of the earth,” says Hecht.  However, even with the inherent risk, he confirms that developing ideas and changing the way people communicate is “the best feeling ever.”

Alongside his laundry list of impressive commercial accomplishments, Jared Hecht is vastly changing the social entrepreneurship game. Hecht is the current founder and CEO of Fundera, a start-up investment agency that provides loans and financial planning for entrepreneurial ventures. He has invested and advised successful startups such as Codeacademy, SmartThings, and TransferWise. He also currently sits on the advisory board of the Columbia University Entrepreneurship Organization and is a guest blogger for prestigious business sites like entrepreneur.com and Forbes. Jared Hecht is not only a man with good ideas, but he’s willing to take risks for ventures that he believes in, making him one of this generation’s greatest entrepreneurs.

Jack Ma and Alibaba

Jack Ma: Founder of Alibaba

Jack Ma’s story of rags-to-riches as a young man from China is one of the most inspiring entrepreneurial stories there is. Ma was born in Hangzhou, China to a poor household. As a young boy Ma always wanted to learn English, because he sensed that the language would one day be important on a national level. After failing two entrance exams, Ma ultimately made it to college and graduated from Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Ma then worked as an english teacher at a university prior to launching his entrepreneurial career.

Upon visiting America in 1995, Ma discovered the Internet and was in awe at the potential of the World Wide Web. Ma also noticed the rise in popularity of online selling by American companies, and realized that China did not have anything similar. After returning to China, Ma became inspired by what he saw in America and drew up a plan to create a Chinese e-commerce company, which he called, “Chinapage.”

After a failed attempt at growing Chinapage to the scale and power that Ma wanted, he left the company and took a job in the Chinese government. Ma made many connections in the government, but still had a grand vision for creating an e-commerce company in China, and left his government job in 1999 to start Alibaba. Ma’s goal was to create a company that would empower small and medium businesses in China to facilitate international trade without the intervention of the government. Ma was initially denied by silicon valley investors before receiving funding from both Softbank and Goldman Sachs to help fund Alibaba. After many years of Alibaba remaining non profitable, the company’s business model prevailed and the company overtook eBay as the largest e-commerce site in China.

While Alibaba faced many challenges throughout its history, the company was able to overcome those challenges to become china’s largest e-commerce site and one of the largest in the world. Alibaba faced lack of funding, slow growth, lack of an international appeal, and much more. In an interview, Ma stated: “Instead of learning from other people’s success, learn from their mistakes. Most of the people who fail share common reasons(to fail) whereas success can be attributed to various different kinds of reasons.” This is incredibly profound, as one of the most important lessons entrepreneurs are taught is that failure is ok. Ma exemplifies what it means to show perseverance, entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity. I learned from reading about Ma that failure is ok, and that you might have to fail many times before you succeed. I also learned how important it is to show perseverance, and trust in your business plan.

JELANI JONES-LANI BOO BATH

Meet Jelani Jones. As a young girl Jelani wanted to start her own business. At the age of 9, she started Lani Boo Bath from a love of being creative. This also stemmed from her bath products and this gave her a wonderful idea. Why not put the two of them together and make a profit. Many years of visiting local farmer’s markets and trying figure out how to make her products perfect, Lani Boo Bath was born. Her support is not just local, but goes world wide. She now tries to inspire other young entrepreneurs as she sells her products on her website and at trade shows in which she can participate.

She has handcrafted all-natural soaps infused with essential oils, bathMonkey Farts perfect blend of banana and mango image 0 bombs an explosion of soothing aromatherapy and moisture-rich ingredients in your bath. All of these things can be found on her website under their respective tabs. Her bath bombs sell for around $4.50 US. Her soaps range from the price of $3.50 to $21.90. This is very impressive for her as she has done an excellent job selling her products. I wish her the best of luck and hope she continues to have success.

Cameron Johnson- The Steps Of Becoming A Young Entrepreneur

Cameron Johnson started his business venture at the age of nine. While his piers were playing and being kids, Johnson had his mind on something else.

Young Venture

When Cameron Johnson was just nine years old he started making cards for his family on special occasions. Friends and neighbors started showing an interest and he was soon taking orders on to make cards for them. His first business was called, Cheers and Tears Printing Co.

After making $300 he started another business called Cheers and Tears Beanie Wholesale. With his second business he bought Beanie Babies whole sale and sold them making 10x more than he invested. He made $50,000 at the age of just 12.

A year later he started working on something else, but this time it was online. He created a service that forwarded emails to a specific account without showing any information about who sent it. He was unable to do the coding himself, so using his resources, he hired a coder to make it for him. This online service is called My EZ mail. This business made him $3,000 a month at the age of 13.

During his teenage years he decided to partner up with another teenager to make a online advertising company, called Surfingprizes.com; they would show advertisements on top web browsers for $.2 an hour. They started partnering with some big names making $300,000 a month. Before graduating high school he successfully led 15 start up businesses. He also wrote his own book about being a 15 year old entrepreneur.

Looking at what Cameron Johnson was involved in just before graduation can inspire anyone at any age. It is impressive how young and successive he was going through his business ventures as a kid. At this point in his life all of his assets added up to a over a million dollars, not too bad for a teenager. I also think its impressive to see what he started with and compare it to what he has now. He just started with a $300 dollar card making company and in 9 years he makes that into over a million dollars. Then it makes you ask the question, what can I do with the resources that I have?

 

BuzzFeed

Today BuzzFeed is known as a source of “news”, pop-culture, entertainment, and YouTube video series. It exploded into popularity with its listicles (list-articles) which still remain one of its more popular features, though it has since expanded into other forms of online media, including web comics, web video series, and–more recently–serious news.

But BuzzFeed started as something much smaller. In 2006 Jonah Peretti, then working for HuffingtonPost, started BuzzFeed. Back then it was a place that curated web content that algorithms predicted would become viral. Gradually it expanded into articles, first simply posts describing viral web content, and then their famous listicles, and eventually longer entertainment-based pieces and news. In 2016 they split their brand between BuzzFeed (entertainment) and BuzzFeed news (news-based content). Its online video presence also grew in popularity as web series it produced grew popular on YouTube.

From its inception as a viral curator to its modern identity as a source of pop culture content and “serious” news, BuzzFeed, and its millennial founders, have demonstrated a desire to remain ahead of the curve when it comes to producing, distributing, and cultivating content in the twenty-first century. Their strategy seems to involve jumping on trends to see which ones will pay off. Over the past thirteen years they have experimented in many areas of content creation, with varying success. This demonstrates an entrepreneurial spirit of a willingness to experiment and an understanding of the purpose of failure in innovation.

Though far from a perfect company (it has weathered criticism for plagiarism and false-reporting and poor work environments), BuzzFeed will remain a thoughtful example of an entrepreneurial spirit in a decades old medium (the news and entertainment). No doubt, it will continue to innovate and experiment in the years to come.

Leaving Facebook For Quora: A Questionable Decision for Adam D’Angelo?

35 year old Adam D’Angelo was the chief technology officer at Facebook until his departure in 2008, when he decided to leave and start his own website, Quora. Quora is a question-and-answer website where anyone can ask any question and receive an answer from another user.

Something I find exemplary about Adam D’Angelo is that he was willing to take that (entrepreneurial) risk to leave a large, rapidly emerging company to try something new of his own. This is a very risky move because he held quite a high position in the company and left it all to start something new and unknown.

I think Adam D’Angelo is driven by the excitement and innovation of creating something new and also providing something new to people that solves a problem for them. His idea for Quora was innovative and solved the problem or not having answers to questions on the internet. Sure, you can search your question on the internet but you might not be able to find the exact answer you need, just a general answer. Quora allows everyone’s questions to be in one place with many specific answers to your question.

Adam D’Angelo exhibits many entrepreneurial traits. He shows risk, passion, innovation, excitement, determination, and many other traits of an entrepreneur. The risk to leave his good position to pursue a new goal, the passion to create something never done before, the innovation to think and push towards something new and creative, the determination to find the success he wanted to achieve.

Adam D’Angelo inspire me because he shows that sometimes to you have to remove yourself from your comfort zone to reach out and expand on horizons that haven’t been touched yet. Although a question-and-answer website may seem like it would fade away, D’Angelo has kept it lively and it continues to expand and grow. I’ve learned quite a bit from this entrepreneur and that’s why I think he is an important figure and someone we could all learn something from.

 

Quizlet- Andrew Sutherland

Have had a last-minute cram? Tried to Google answers to a quiz (not that any Grover would)? or Tried needed to make and catalog flash cards online?

At 15 years old Andrew Sutherland started Quizlet. This online, and now app-based, service allows students to create, share, and view series of flashcards. These cards can be grouped be class/course number as well as a general topic title. As the service has grown- several subscription services are available to both remove adds and not limit content. Sutherland furthered his education by attending MIT for three years. Sutherland dropped out to further his venture. Quizlet, now approaching 40 Million Users, raised $30 Million in it’s last round of financing.

The new ‘Quizlet Pro’ gives users unlimited access and storage for a fee of $20 a year. This platform continues to expand, now offering ‘Quizlet Full’ in seven languages.

I find this platform intriguing as, aside from serves, the company does not have large physical assets- rather, the information and content is created and cataloged by users themselves. This self-perpetuating model is scale-able and long-term, as the more users, the more content, more content means appealing to more users, so on and so forth.

 

 

 

Jack Kim – Benelab

Jack Kim a high school student from Seattle, Washington goes to school during the day and by all means is a normal high school student. With a little help from some of his friends, he started Benelab. A non-profit search engine that donates the revenue, from advertising, to charities. Kim joined forces with six other high school students this past summer, now they have expanded to 12 members. His focus is involving high school students after instituting a no adult rule.

Kim is motivated by the idea of helping people and finding unique ways to do it. This is the first completely non-profit search engine, which is why it is so innovative. Kim and friends realized that the best way to learn was outside of the classroom, by gaining world experience.

Kim made sure to focus his target market on students and the younger generation. This sets him apart from many entrepreneurs who aim to get as much traffic as they can rather than a specific market. They realized that young people care a lot about charitable causes.

Starting Benelab wasn’t easy spending just $1500 in the process. Although ran by broke high school students Benelab isn’t about the big money for Kim. They donate 100% of their revenue and are way more crowd-source oriented than their competitors. They also have their own technology behind the search functionality. Benelab is completely volunteer run as well. Even though people doubted them and said they couldn’t do it; Kim showed them that even 6 high school students from Seattle can make a difference.

Tati Westbrook & James Charles

Recently on the internet, there has been some conflict going on between two very close friends. Tati Westbrook and James Charles were super close friends and business partners, until James decided to release his own type of product. Tati had her own gummy vitamin line, and it was doing fairly well. In the past few weeks, James had released his own vitamin line that was essentially going against Tati’s product line. This caused the two friends to drift apart, and the whole internet knows about it. This may seem like some “beef” between two friends, but Tati figured out how to make it into MILLIONS of dollars. After James had released his vitamin line, Tati combated her friend James by releasing a YouTube video talking about how bad of a friend he was and how she basically viewed him as a traitor. Here is how Tati had flipped the whole situation into a profit for herself: she basically twisted the whole situation, made James sound like an awful human, and created EMPATHY for herself. People felt extremely bad for Tati, and what better way to support her than to go out and buy her product? Tati’s vitamins costs $40, and she got to advertise them even more in her video about talking down to James. When she did this, many people unsubscribed from James’ YouTube channel and joined Tati’s side. The video that was released obtained nearly 50 million views in a short period of time. If Tati had convinced nearly 1% (a very normal conversion rate, which is about 500,000 customers in this case) of those viewers to buy her product at $40 a pop, it averages out to over $19 million. I agree, this is not the best way to go about this situation, but Tati clearly knew what she was doing to James as well as collecting an insane amount of profit. This could have been handled in a much better, moral way, but people will do a lot of crazy things to make money. Hopefully the situation will be resolved soon so that everything can go back to being somewhat normal. This is an example of how somebody can take conflict between two friends and turn it into a huge sum of money.

Sam Kolder Lives a Life of Adventure

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Sam Kolder is a social media star from Canada who is best known as a filmmaker, editor and photographer. He travels the world in search of the next big thing to documents in some way and share with the millions of people he influences and inspires. He acquired this fame from his Beautiful Destinations video, which has been uploaded on his photosharing app and YouTube channel ‘kold’.

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He has more than 7.1 million followers on Instagram and more than 145k subscribers on his YouTube channel. These numbers are no surprise to someone who has spent time looking through his Instagram feed or YouTube channel. The images and footage he captures are breathtaking and incredibly unique. He is sponsored by numerous companies such as Marriot and MVMT apparel. These endorsements give him the financial capabilities to travel the world and continue to inspire people. Being just 21 years old, he is quite the young entrepreneur. Another form of income for his is through editing footage for different organizations. He is one of the most skilled editors I have ever seen and is using that to his advantage to make considerable earnings.