Archive for Online Companies – Page 9

Polyvore

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We’ve had the opportunity to learn a little about Google several times in class. This pioneering and world-changing company has a knack for curating an army of visionaries, creators, innovators, and encouraging their employees in risk and creativity. Jess Lee, a millennial entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of P O L Y V O R E, recalls that the greatest advice she was ever received came from her mentors at Google while working there as a product manager out of college.

Lee studied engineering at Stanford. She laughs about coming from an oriental family, where she was only ever encouraged to become a doctor, engineer, or something else of high esteem and considerable salary. But she went out on a limb and accepted a position with Google, determined to challenge herself.

While working at Google, Lee fell in love with Polyvore. And as an innovator, when she fell in love, that meant she incessantly shot emails to the then CEO, Pasha Sadri, with suggestions for improvements. Sadri replied offered a challenge: “Why don’t you come here and fix this stuff yourself? We should talk.”

Lee accepted.

Ever since childhood, Lee remembers wanting to do something creative, like writing. Polyvore was enchanting to Lee for the same reason it is to thousands of other people: it’s a creative platform and community of shared fashion ideas that enables fashion visionaries of all ages to graphically assemble outfits online by digitally collecting snaps of clothing items from their favorite sites. Whether you come from a small town, or work as the editor of VOGUE, Polyvore gives you the opportunity to create, combine, influence fashion in the minds of people all over the world, and gain a following.

In true entrepreneurial spirit, and with no business school history, Lee took on a company she didn’t even think would be profitable at first. She held tightly to a lesson she’d learned at Google and has served her well: “Build something users will love and money will come later.”

Pit It! Pinterest.

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There is an online platform that many individuals, particularly millennials, enjoy. Well, often it’s a procrastination mechanism, at least it is for me. Pinterest allows you to save links to various sites including (but not limited to) retail sites and blogs. “Pins”, as they are called, are categorized and browse-able. With one simple click on the image, your computer, tablet or smartphone immediately links to the site from which the picture was pinned. This allows a user to collect and share others ideas, styles, thoughts, quotes, travels and just about anything you could think to take a snap shot of. I have certainly found myself spending a lot of time on this virtual creativity board.

Ben Silberman, born in 1982, co-founded the virtual pin-board known as Pinterest. Silberman is an internet entrepreneur and acts as the CEO of Pinterest. Silberman is quite the accomplished man. He participated in a prestigious high school research program at MIT, and he later graduated from Yale with his undergraduate degree. Silberman worked at Google in the online advertising group, until he started creating his own apps. Silberman said he thought of Pinterest because he has always liked to collect things. Now, with Pinterest, we can all collect ideas!

Bungie

Founded by Jason Jones and Alex Seropian in May 1991 in Chicago, Illinois. Bungie is an American video game developer located in Bellevue, Washington.

Jason Jones is a video game developer who began programming on Apple computers in high school. One of his early games he assembled was Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete. It was a multiplayer game he worked in partnership with Seropian to publish while attending the University of Chicago.

Eventually Marathon, Myth, Oni and Halo: Combat Evolved came along. Marathon did well but paled in comparison to the success of Halo.

Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000 to develop the Halo games for their Xbox console.

On October 5, 2007, Bungie become an independent company, Bungie LLC and Microsoft still had ownership of the Halo IP.

More recently Bungie has made a deal with the Call of Duty developer Activision. The partnership is a ten year long project called Destiny.

Bungie.net

Activision

Destiny

How Alexis Ohanian made the world suck less

When he was still in college, Alexis Ohanian told one of his professors that he wanted to the world to suck less. At first he and his friend Steve Huffman planned to make the world “suck less” by inventing a mobile sub-sandwich ordering app, but after some thought decided to create “the front page of the internet. That front page they created is Reddit. What Ohanian did was make an online community of people who could interact and voice their opinions on an infinite number of things. To make things easier (and less cluttered), reddit was divided into multiple “sub-reddits,” like ‘Politics,’ ‘Music,’ ‘Gaming,’ ‘Technology.’ and the list goes on and on. His aim was to offer a home for people to talk about anything, not matter how weird or niche it was. And users also have the opportunity to create their own sub-reddits (thereby, their own communities), and discuss whatever they want to with other users.
In addition to being the central hub of almost anything on the internet, Reddit is also where a lot of ideas initially started off as small communities before growing to what they are now. For example, reddit was the first place where people interested in Cryptocurrencies talked and connected before it became what today is known as Bitcoin. In fact the subreddit for entrepreneurs (linked here) is one of the fastest growing communities that is home to an astounding number of incredible ideas, and entrepreneurs use it to gain feedback and comments from fellow community members.

I think that the invention of Reddit is an incredible feat in the field of entrepreneurship, because it not only gave people a platform to be informed and be entertained, but also a means by which they may interact with others, voice opinions, find new ways to get their ideas and voice out and be more productive members of the community!

Bringing Back Classy Swimwear

rey-swimwear-modest-swimming-suits71f9323eb27d9e49f01a3d8d764f067fIt  was a hot summer in Hollywood, and between acting gigs Jessica Ray found herself spending most of her time by the poolside to meet up with friends and escape the blistering heat. After being frustrated by observing how objectified women are in bikinis, Jessica decided to boycott her normal scanty swimsuits for something with more character and coverage.

After surfing the web for hours, Jessica gave up. There weren’t any decently modest swimsuits available on the market that didn’t look like they belonged on a grandmother. Seriously, what’s so hard about making a cute, classic, semi-conservative swimsuit that’s appealing to the younger generation? Jessica was determined, if she couldn’t buy a cute swimsuit- she’d make her own. She had no sewing or design experience, but that’s not a problem for a true entrepreneur!

Jessica isn’t alone. Other people in Hollywood are interested in sporting classier swimwear; there is a healthy demand and Jessica decided to satisfy that want with from a creative and youthful approach.  8 years ago, Jessica Ray swimwear debuted their first swimwear line.

Jessica Rey swimsuits are becoming increasingly popular.  The brand is inspired by the debatably the most iconic woman of all time: Audrey Hepburn. The line strives to uphold the value and dignity of women through their designs. Classy doesn’t have to look frumpy, and Jessica Rey swimwear exists to promote that vision with a vintage vibe.

It’s Really Quite Pinteresting

Co-founded in 2010, Pinterest is a relatively new company that revolutionized the discovery aspect of social media. With 176 million registered users, it’s clear that millennial founders Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra (aka Cold Brew Labs) had a stellar idea in the concept of Pinterest.

Pinterest is a visually-driven website that allows users to collect and sort ideas, articles, pictures, and other inspirations. Every “pin” is a photo, and if you like what you see, you can double click to see the pin’s origin or click the repin button to save it to one of your boards. It’s like a virtual scrapbook or file folder- but beautifully designed and much simpler. Additionally, users can add their own content to the site to share their own ideas and work.

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This wildly successful site was the phoenix that rose out of the founder’s previous app failure, Tote. Part of the reason Tote failed was people hadn’t really begun shopping through apps yet; the main way people used the app was to send product images to themselves. They were image collecting. The recognition of this behavioral trend was the key for Cold Brew Labs’ next innovation. They took this new insight and transferred it over to the web to avoid one of the big potholes Tote had, and voila, Pinterest was born. Its monstrous success is a testament to what can happen when failure is looked at as a learning experience rather than defeat.

Although some have call Pinterest’s CEO somewhat “socially awkward,” it’s clear that his creation is a work of social genius.

[Read more about Pinterest’s origins on Business Insider!]

Good Clothes for a Good Cause

Ivory Ella started when five college students and a high school business teacher came together and wanted to create “good clothes for a good cause.” Ryan Duranso, Jacob Castaldi, Richard Henne, Matthew Fiano, John Allen, and Esma Ilyas founded the company on April 18, 2015 and has grown rapidly ever since.

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The company is driven by the elephants getting poached in Africa. In the last decade Africa’s elephant population has declined by 64%. The founders of Ivory Ella saw a need to build awareness and help the cause. Ivory Ella is partnered with an organization called Save the Elephants. This organization is operating out of Kenya, where it researches elephants and calls attention to the problem of the declining elephant population. Save the Elephants has started to see a growth in the elephant population since they have been raising awareness.

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Ivory Ella has already been so successful in the short time they have been open. With 10% of their proceeds going to Save the Elephant, many people buy the shirts just for the social aspect. Not only is their company driven to save the elephants, but their designs are really cute as well! The have a variety of different designs targeted to girls from middle school to college age. Along with t-shirts, they also sell outerwear, hats, jewelry, and drinkware.

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The company prides themselves for connecting with their target market and really listening to the customers. This is very evident when you look at their customers and see how satisfied they are. These young entrepreneurs have created a great brand with great meaning.

Aaron Gotwalt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn8dC-AzD5I

– Penn State University’s Alumni Achievement Awards Dinner, 2015

 

Aaron Gotwalt is an Entrepreneur in San Francisco, California who grew up in Lititz, PA. He is the Co-Founder, CTO, and occasional software engineer at Projector. He Previously founded CoTweet (acquired in 2011 by ExactTarget), and graduated from Schreyer Honors College in 2004.

 

Schreyer’s news

http://news.psu.edu/story/370942/2015/09/22/academics/gotwalt%E2%80%99s-transformational-experiences-helped-launch-startup

AngelList

https://angel.co/gotwalt

His Blog

https://blog.projector.com/@gotwalt

 

Clef: Brennen Byrne

While in going to college for English, Brennen Byrne took a computer science class just for fun, he didn’t realize how much that impacted his future. The first day of class his professor told him that he could create whole entire worlds, businesses, and products just by writing them down. This sparked Byrne’s interest. Later in college he and his freeing came up with an idea to use your phone as a way to identify you. This tuned into what is now called Clef.

Being as our world is so involved in technology, it must be guarded safely in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing. The people at Clef are doing just that. Clef is a two-factor authentication that is safer and easier to use then other password or authentication tools. Clef is based in Oakland, California. They are a very small business with few workers; however they are making a lot of people’s lives easier.

Their system is a two-factor authentication which means unlike a regular password there are two steps to get to your information, making it more secure. You just use your phone to swipe in front of the computer screen. Clef also differentiates itself because of its use of Apple Touch ID. The usability of this eliminates the need for having a lot of different passwords crowding your mind. According to Clef’s research their tool will make customers 45% more likely to return.

Social Media Superstar

Most people have heard of the social media platform called Tumblr. It is a place where people can reblog pictures and post small captions to their personal “walls”. In some ways it is like Pinterest, which is picture based and individuals have a picture profile (unlike Instagram in which you post pictures one at a time separately). However, Tumblr, unlike Pinterest, is more about art and less about DIY ideas. What most people don’t know about Tumblr is that it was created by a then 21 year old man named David Karp. He started Tumblr in 2007 in his mother’s basement. He did not truly know how much people would be interested in his product, but he thought he had a good idea. He was right. In the first 2 weeks, 75,000 individuals joined his social media website. Tumblr continued to take off until they were purchased by Yahoo in 2013 for 1.1 billion dollars. Karp, now 28, is worth around 200 million dollars.

Karp did not know the success that his idea would have. He thought that he had a good idea and jumped in. His dedication and belief in himself is something that we as young entrepreneurs should emulate as we go onto our own projects.

Works Cited

 Shandrow, K. (2015, March 19). 8 CEOs Who Amassed a Fortune Before Age 30 (Infographic). Retrieved December 10, 2015, from                    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244139