We often taken the websites that we use for granite and never tend to think about who exactly created them. Many people use “Tumblr” and the creator of that is a man by the name of David Karp. Karp created the website in 2007 when he was just 21 years old. He embodies the types of characteristics that all entrepreneurs must have in order to achieve success. He is driven, refuses to accept failure, and he made his vision become a reality by working at it everyday. Tumblr is a micro-blogging website for its users and he recently sold it to Yahoo and now has an estimated net worth of $200 million. What is unique about Karp is the fact that he did not let his age stop him from achieving his dreams. It was difficult for him to garner respect due to the fact that he was so young, but none of that bothered him. Tumblr is still extremely popular even with many others competitors emerging once they caught wind about blogging websites. It remains popular because it is often the first blogging website that comes to people’s minds and Karp made sure of that with savvy advertising and publicity. Karp was able to sell his empire to Yahoo for a reported $1.1 billion and the website is now valued at over $800 million. All of this happened with one man and a crazy idea. I learned that sometimes it does not take a large group of people and all kinds of planning in order to make a great idea. Sometimes all it takes is a self-driven person and a computer. An unstoppable work ethic and vision is the perfect formula to get someone started on their path towards success. He consistently worked towards his goal, and it did not happen overnight. Success takes time and Karp stands by that. If what he did was easy, everyone would be doing it, but they are not.
Archive for Online Companies – Page 6
Ed Hollands: DrivenMedia
Picture a rainy-day commute through the city; traffic piling up, staring out your window at all the other cars and trucks. You can’t even enjoy your favorite view of the city because there are too many tall trucks and vans in the way. This is where 23-year-old Ed Holland found himself and then suddenly it hit him. What if you could turn a profit off the view that is blocked; more specifically what if he could find a way to sell unique advertising on all those blank trucks and vans? He took this thought and ran with it, creating a startup called Driven Media.
There was an unrecognized opportunity by many businesses that Ed had uncovered. His company will wrap trucks with advertisements. The innovation around Ed’s business comes in the form of tracking the impressions the vehicle advertisements have. DrivenMedia contracts with companies whose drivers are on the road at least 5 days a week and uses their GPS trackers to ensure the ads are being seen. Each day a typical trailer or truck is seen by an average of 55,000 people. When you break down the cost per 1000 impressions, it is quite a valuable deal for the companies that contract with DrivenMedia. Ed’s company sells 12-month packages and it has proved to be a very profitable niche.
Reading about Ed’s story it affirmed to me the simplicity and excitement that lies in the everyday life in respect to the possibility of innovation. Even when you are not necessarily looking to innovate thoughts can just materialize in your head and change your life completely. It has reminded me to not only recognize problems in life and complain, but to then continue those thoughts into forming possible solutions. No pain, no sale. Never underestimate the power hidden in your problems.
Click above to be directed to DrivenMedia website
Evan Spiegel, who was b
orn in 1990, became the world’s youngest billionaire at the age of 25. He accomplished this by developing a particular app; an app that is now practically synonymous with the word “millennial.” That app, which started out as Picaboo, would later be renamed to Snapchat. Evan founded his company with the help of his friends Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown, and their app grew to over a million users in just one year. What’s so great about Snapchat was the fact that it solved a problem most people didn’t know they even had – the need to send temporary messages to someone. At first, when Evan pitched this idea to his friends in 2011, they ridiculed it. Now, with Snapchat boasting over 150 million daily users, it’s safe to say that Evan had a truly amazing idea, and he knew just what to do with it. Evan Spiegel is an important role model to me in the field of entrepreneurship; not just because of his incredible success, but because of the difficulties he faced when he was going through the process of growing his company, and how he responded to them.
When Evan first started his company, he faced some difficulties with getting investors, since none of them really thought being able to send temporary messages was a good idea. However, he didn’t quit, he didn’t give up; he kept at it, and pushed harder and harder to find someone to invest in his company. He was successful eventually, but who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t persisted with his idea? One thing’s for sure, he definitely wouldn’t have become the world’s youngest billionaire. Read More →
In 2011, Garrett Gee saw a need for a simple QR code scanning app. Many of the ones available at the time were clunky and hard to use. The iPad 2 was being introduced in February, and he thought there might be a blog that showed the top ten apps for the new tablet. He wanted to be the first one with an easy-to-use QR code scanner for the
iPad 2. A few days after the release of the device, Garrett launched Scan. It found a place in the blog like he was hoping, and gained a large amount of traction. Three months later, there had been over one million downloads of the app, and 25 million downloads by the end of 2012. The app and website were updated often with new features, including the ability to scan different types of codes and make QR codes to link to your Instagram account.
Scan was able to acquire $1.7 million in investments by 2013, including money from Google Ventures. Garrett also presented on Shark Tank in 2013, but did not secure any investments. Their revenue came mostly from advertisements on the app and website, and in May, 2012, their advertising revenue had risen to over $1,000 each day.
Scan was sold to Snapchat in the fall of 2014 for $54 million. Once this happened, Garrett and his wife Jessica decided to take their (at the time) two kids and travel the world, but they also said that they would not spend any of the money made from the Scan transaction. They put the money away, and pretty much started from scratch again. In the fall of 2015, they sold almost all of their belongings, which totaled to $51,500. They were going to live off of that money from August to December, then figure out what to do from there.
At the end of the time period, they decided to keep traveling, but only if they could find a way to have it be self-sustaining or profitable. From the beginning, Garrett had been working on creating a brand for the family
(The Bucket List Family) with things like their blog, YouTube videos, and Instagram. They worked hard to find companies to work with who would support them in exchange for promotion. At the beginning, they had trouble breaking even since they were small, but eventually they started making a good amount of money. Now they get paid anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 for a sponsored YouTube video, and $5,000 to $8,000 for an Instagram post. Companies they have worked with include hotels, clothing brands, Airbnb, and GoPro. They have been able to have some amazing experiences on their travels.
The Gee family, specifically Garrett, put in lots of time and effort to become successful. He did it with Scan, then started all over with a new idea to support their family passion for traveling. There is much that can be learned from him and his family.
Do you have eye insurance? Most of us do not, and that can make it hard to see, literally. I mean paying $600+ to see for the next 6 months can be really hard, so what do most people do? Wear their contacts past the date they should, which can damage eyes. My sister in particular wore the same pair of contacts for years, which resulted in damage to her eyes! This has been happening forever, but Ben Cogan and Jesse Horwitz are putting an end to this with Hubble. 
Hubble is a high-quality contact lenses company that can provide you with your prescription without draining your bank account. While they did have to jump through many hoops to get this product up to par with the bigger companies, they still managed to create a product that is way less expensive than name brand contacts! There are four companies that control 95% of the market, which gives them the ability to place great margins on their product, but Hubble decreases those margins and gives you daily contact lenses that cost less than a dollar a day. For those of you who do not purchase contacts, I personally have paid about $100.00 a month for my contacts since I do not have eye insurance, and of course by I, I mean my parents. I also wear monthly contacts as opposed to dailies, which Hubble sells, that are generally cheaper.
There are a few things Hubble is solving. The biggest issue is allowing people to purchase an item that they need, without having to dish out a great deal of money. I would 100% love to save $70 a month on an item that I need to function in every day life. The effect of saving money also allows people to stop damaging their eyes trying to wear their contacts for prolonged periods of time. They are saving eyes and money.
The other interesting factor here is that despite having a small gap to fit into the market in the first place, Ben and Jesse managed to disrupt the market. They provide a service that delivers to you directly, taking the middle man out aka your eye doctor. But when your prescription needs updated you can find someone through their website. This is also a well developed company that could bring other contact companies back down to an even playing level. They used a tight gap to create an even more effective opportunity for themselves, which is absolutely incredible.
I’ve learned a lot from Ben and Jesse. Breaking the market is incredible, but they also fixed a problem everyone else has just been accepting for years. Every venture has hoops, being self aware of what they needed and how to get to that goal is part of their success, even in a market that was dominated. This is a problem I have, but I just assumed because contacts are a medical product that the price could not be dropped. They really looked at this problem, researched, and developed a foundation for a company that has so much potential.
Jack White, famous for being the lead singer of the White Stripes, still impacts the world with his music and brilliant mind. Despite the early 2000’s band breaking up, Jack White continues to crank out his own solo albums, one of which he released this year and climbed to the top of the US 200 Billboard.With deep, often strange lyrics, and screeching, distorted guitar melodies, Jack White tops his performances off with color coordinated clothes, instruments, and lights. Along with producing his own albums, he opened up Third Man Records in 2009, a combination of a record store, studio, and concert venue. After opening up another branch of Third Man in Detroit in 2015, White felt inspired to extend it into a large vinyl-pressing factory in 2017 called Third Man Pressing, making it the only place where records can be made-to-order. Ben Blackwell, co-founder of Third Man Pressing and nephew of Jack White, says that “For Detroit to continue moving forward, you need to have different ideas. [Manufacturing] is a field that’s driven by creativity. That’s something this city has always been flush with.”
Jack White, while often considered an acquired taste, is one of the most creative and innovative musicians of this decade. Not only does he have a creative mind, but also a business-like one. Throughout White’s career, he has faced many struggles and criticisms, but he still held his head up high and worked his way to fame. “There are many people out there who will tell you that you can’t,” White says,”What you’ve got to do is turn around and say, ‘Watch me.'” Jack White’s passion is to turn music back into the raw, emotion-filled expression that it used to be, and no one can get in-between an inspired man and his dream. White not only revolutionized the rock n’ roll industry, but he also demonstrated the flexibility of the title of ‘entrepreneur’. Jack White is a living example of where creativity, hard work, and talent can take a person.
Connor Grieb, a 2018 graduate of Grove City College is already self-employed, as the owner of SEO Vineyard, a digital marketing company. He first discovered his entrepreneurial mindset when he was twelve years old and started a snow removal business. This led him to buying a truck and plowing commercially 
throughout his high-school career. This experience showed him how much he loved working for himself and he developed a growing desire to be an entrepreneur in the future. He also decided that he didn’t want to do work that relied on weather or a lot of physical strength. Some other things that drove him to be an entrepreneur include the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others, the opportunity to be extremely successful, the uncapped financial opportunity, a flexible schedule, and less risk in the long run. During his college career, he discovered that through digital marketing, he could meet all of his needs and desires.
He launched his company, SEO Vineyard during the beginning of his junior year of college. While taking classes, he was also providing services for 3 clients. Unfortunately, he could not manage any more clients with all of his school work. Therefore, he focused on maintaining a good relationship with his few clients. Since graduation, Connor has quadrupled the size of his business. He now has over 12 clients, which he has acquired in 4 short months. However, Connor notes that obtainin
g new clients was not easy. There was an 8 week span where he didn’t add a single client or make an extra dollar, but through the support of friends and family, he continued to work hard and push through this hard time. He encourages other entrepreneurs to do the same because God has a bigger plan and things do get better. Also this past summer, he became an LLC, partnering with an accountant and an attorney. He did this to create a veil of protection for himself and his business.
From Connors experiences, he has learned a lot about himself and entrepreneurship. The biggest thing that he has learned is patience. He had to wait to graduate to expand his business. He had to wait for prospective clients to return phone calls. He has to wait to become successful. Through the process of starting and building his company, he has become more reasonable with his expectations and is taking things one step at a time. Connor also discovered that one of his strongest entrepreneurial traits is competition. This trait pushes him to improve and make adjustments to the mistakes he has made. He hopes to continue to attract new clients and expand his business.
Email: seovineyard@gmail.com
Phone: 724-987-2881
Before I became aware the I wanted to pursue entrepreneurship, I assumed that entrepreneurs were individuals who were well aged and had much experience in the world. I could not have been more wrong. Meet Nick D’Aloisio, one of the youngest entrepreneurs to be successful at the age of 18, in the year 2014. D’Aloisio is the inventor of the program Summly; an app on Yahoo that takes a large amount of text and condenses it into a summary for users who are reading the news on their mobile devices. One of the many reasons D’Aloisio became such a success is he possessed assertiveness and passion that I believe is a huge key factor is making a difference. He became interested in coding at the age of 12 and the amount of knowledge and skills he obtained in six years demonstrates that all one needs to is the drive to make a difference.
Dubsmash is a lip synching app where users can pick from multiple soundbites to record themselves with. The video then can be shared to multiple other social media platforms. Roland Grenke, Jonas Druppel, and Daniel Taschik are the inventors of Dubsmash. The creators originated from Germany. The team previously created two failed apps, but Dubsmash was reigned number one in one week in Germany. The team saw the rise of social apps and the music industry, deciding to combine the two. More than 100 million people have downloaded Dubsmash. Celebrities like Selena Gomez, Jimmy Fallon, and Rihanna have even used Dubsmash. Many entertainment outlets like movies, music, and tv shows have been promoted through Dubsmash. In May of 2016, Dubsmash earned six million dollars. Dubsmash’s major competition has been Musically and Snapchat. Sadly, Dubsmash has not stood the test of time. It has faded away despite its success in the app store. It goes to show that applications are big business, but it takes a lot to stay on top.
Daniel Ek is one of the founders of Spotify, which is the leading music service and also features access to podcasts, and videos. It allows users to access songs, videos and more from all over the world. Using the basic functions, like streaming music, is free. There is an option to upgrade to Spotify Premium which costs $9.99 per month and includes personalized features where users can create their own radio stations, collections of music, and playlists. It is also available for use across different devices like phones, tablets, cars, and even TVs. It even has the ability to be integrated into social media and matchmaking apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Tinder so people can find friends and potential dates with similar music interests. They use the idea of “freemium,” where basic streaming services are free to the user with advertisements to offset the cost for Spotify. This way, users can listen to new songs without having to pay for each song. It saves the users money, and also saves space on devices because the music isn’t downloaded onto the device, it’s just streamed. It has big competitors, particularly Apple, but it still has over 100 million users and is continuing to grow. It uses many data collection techniques in order to release new products and keep users interested. Spotify has helped the world by creating a new way for people to access new music. In the past, music piracy was a pretty big issue. Spotify has helped decrease music piracy because it’s free and gives users access to top hits. It is a completely legal way for people to access music, and it in turn doesn’t hurt the music producers and singers who lose out on money when their music is pirated. With Spotify, they still get paid because of the occasional ads that play while the user is listening. Daniel Ek definitely was innovative when he created Spotify. He transformed the music streaming industry by benefiting both the users and producers.