Archive for Social Entrepreneur – Page 9

Melonnial Entreprenuers

Brian Keller (left) and Zachary Quinn (right)

Seeing beyond the facade of grades and GPA’s, Brian Keller and Zachary Quinn took their college entrepreneurship project as more than just an academic endeavor. An assignment given on the second day of class was transformed by these two men into tangible hope, love, and support for pediatric cancer patients nationwide in less than two years. Love Your Melon is a social enterprise which personally delivers knit beanies to children fighting cancer upon each sale. The company’s immense success forced them to evolve from donating the hats on a buy-one, give-one basis, to donating half their profits to other nonprofit organizations fighting pediatric cancer and working alongside afflicted families because sales exceeded patients to donate to. 

Heavily involved in serving the homeless with his parents as a child, and inspired by the philosophy of Toms Shoes, Quinn conceived the idea of Love Your Melon. To begin $3,500 was raised in loans from friends and family, the first round of beanies were bought, patches chartered from a local embroiderer, and only one weekend with a booth outside a restaurant later 200 beanies had been sold and 200 more distributed to oncology patients. Spreading like wildfire, sales grew exponentially and supply was quickly trampled by demand. To go beyond financial participation in the cause, Keller and Quinn expanded their enterprise to incorporate customers directly through a college ambassador program. It began with a bus tour across the nation stopping at college campuses to sell, and then transport the students to local hospitals to deliver the gifts first hand. On top of this, product offerings have broadened to blankets, apparel, accessories, even bling for pets, and beyond.

Overwhelmed by the realization that  health is not a guarantee, but a blessing, Keller and Quinn desired to come alongside their afflicted peers- aware that they could just as easily be in the opposite position.  The co-owners continue to be inspired by the fighting spirits they meet every day. With over 170,000 hats and 6.2 million dollars donated since just October of 2012, it is evident that these mere students identified a clear need that others are eager to support. Working within the simple means and limitations of college students, Keller and Quinn were able to see past themselves, refusing to take a class assignment for granted. Now thousands of children are surrounded by an entire community of beanie-wearing supporters. Hair or no hair-no matter-fashionable head wear is a uniting force.

 

 

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.

The Man Wrote his First Book at What Age?

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Ben Shapiro was born in Los Angeles, California in 1984 to a Jewish family that was originally from Russia and Lithuania. At a very young age, Shapiro acquired impressive skills in violin and piano, a testament to how brilliant his mind was at such a young age. He skipped two grades (3rd and 9th) during his early life and ended up graduating high school at the age of 16. When he was 17, he began to write the first book he would publish, Brainwashed; How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth. Along with beginning his first book, he also wrote a nationally syndicated column. This is a wonderful example of a young person who embraced his talents and natural genius to not just provide a source of income for himself, but also to get his career rolling.

He attended the University of California, Los Angeles for his bachelors and Harvard Law School for his masters. Utilizing his education, experience in the world of politics, and incredible knowledge, he founded a right-wing, online news-source called DailyWire. Shapiro spends much of his time speaking on shows, running podcasts, and speaking at events.

AirFox – Social Cryptocurrency

Victor Santos of AirFox

Poverty is a major issue in today’s world, and one of the biggest contributors to poverty around in the world is the lack of access to banks for financial services. Well, Victor Santos and his company, AirFox are here to help solve that problem. Santos is a UC Berkley grad and Ex-Googler who takes pride in his Brazilian roots and wanted to help solve the lack of banking problem in the country closest to his heart. Santos achieved that goal by developing one of the first ever cyrptocurrencies. AirFox is a blockchain cryptocurrency that is derived from Etherium, but is handed out through advertisements and microloans. AirFox tokens, known as AIR, are also handed out by just having and using the app. The app allows those that need financial service help but cannot get it from a bank, for any number of various reasons, to receive help from anyone, so long as they pay back their loans. Users also get the benefits of unlocking bigger loans at better rates so long as they keep repaying those who help them. AirFox has numerous financial partners in Brazil and beyond and is single handedly turning the tides in the fight against poverty throughout the country.

Briago Labs

Coming SoonThe Problem

A while back on the internet I saw a picture of a young woman in tears at a restaurant table. She wasn’t on a date, she was surrounded by family. After reading the post it was clear the tears were indeed happy, not sad. For the first time in her seventeen years of living this girl was given a menu she could read; in braille.

Braigo Labs

Braigo Labs is a company which provides low cost blue tooth and internet equipped braille printers to help the visually impaired. Their goal is to help 50 million of the worlds population accomplish a task most of us take for granted. Being able to read independently is a struggle for the visually impaired. Typical braille printers cost around three thousand dollars. Braigo Labs product is sold for 82% less than competitors.

Founder

Braigo Labs is one of the most impressive entrepreneurial endeavors in existence. Its impressiveness is compounded by the age of the founder and its creation story. Shubham Banerjee is 14 years old. Braigo Labs primitive version was built with Lego Mindstorms EV3. The inspiration struck while brainstorming ideas for a seventh grade science fair project. Banjeree is not alone in his journey, as many teachers and mentors are encouraging and helping make the second version of the printer possible. Banjeree says the best advice they’ve supplied is; “Be humble,” and “Innovate for the right reasons — money is not one of them.”

 

Helping to Bring Sight to the Blind

Shubham Banerjee was just 12 when he founded Braigo Labs. This is a company developing Braille printers with the ability to take online text, convert it to braille, and print it out.  More than that, Shubham redeveloped this process for 3D. This cuts the price of the printer by more than 1,000 dollars, which keeps the price in the low hundreds. This allows the impact to reach people in every economic class. Image result for shubham banerjee

Shubham writes about his inspirations for this company on their website. He states that 285 million people are visually impared and 90% live in the developing world. What he likes about his printers is that they are D-I-Y. This allows for an easy adoption process by customers. Image result for shubham banerjee

Truthfully Shubham tells the story and mission way better himself. He is quite young, but extremely entrepreneurial in his thinking. At just twelve he started having extreme impact on the world. It will be neat to see how this technology develops and how people will utilize it.

The College Students who Created a Sports Entertainment Empire

See the source image    When thinking about the type of person who would be coined with he term “entrepreneur”, one might envision a well-dressed, business-professional man or woman in a skyrise. While this is true in many instances, there are numerous examples of uncommon people starting uncommonly successful businesses. One prime example of this are the young entrepreneurs who began the sports entertainment dynasty that is Dude Perfect. The co-founders of Dude Perfect, at the time it began, college roommates at Texas A&M University. They created a “trick shot” video out of a backyard and it was an instant hit on YouTube, gathering an impressive 200,000 views over just one week. After this success, the group began to produce more exciting, more impressive videos of seemingly impossible trick shots.

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Through the incredible dedication of the cofounders, they edited the videos by themselves until they have the resources to outsource a full-time producer and editor. They began designing and selling online merchandise through their website and releasing iPhone applications that were downloaded by millions. I have heard two of the cofounders, (Cory and Koby Cotton) speak on how difficult it was to get Dude Perfect off the ground, and they shared how many trials they had to overcome such as low resources, sleep deprivation, and even facial paralysis. Present day, this sports phenomenon is worth more than $10 Million and that number keeps growing significantly. They are currently the seventh most subscribed YouTube channel (36 million) and have accumulated more than 7 billion views. They have worked with celebrities such as Serena Williams, Russel Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, Chris Paul, and Drew Brees. The cofounders of Dude Perfect have created a sports dynasty that is enjoyed by millions and are changing the way we think of sports entertainment all while having the time of their lives.

A “New Story” for the Homeless

In many cases the world’s greatest technological advances are reserved for the rich until they slowly defuse into the mass market and if the poor are lucky, they eventually have a chance to utilize them. However, New Story, a nonprofit; has paired with ICON to give the poor an exclusive first dibs on some amazing technology.

New Story + ICON have developed the capability to 3D print houses and are using this technology to build safe, affordable, and comfortable homes for the homeless around the world.  They can print 600-800 square foot homes in 24 hours for less than 4,000 dollars. The impact this can have on third world is insane. It will create safer and cleaner communities where their residents can develop to their fullest potential.

Not only is New Story a crazy cool organization, but one of its co-founders and CEO is a millennial with a crazy cool story. Brett Hagler went to college pursuing all the wrong things in life. He wanted money, fame, and women. Instead he got cancer. His fight against cancer helped him to put his life into perspective and brought him back to his Christian faith. After beating cancer he decided to follow his new passion and start an organization that actually helps people.

 

2016 Brett was voted a Forbes 30 Under 30 Entrepreneur and in 2018 named Top 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs by Goldman Sachs. In 2017 New Story was called one of the “Most Innovative Companies In The World,” by Fast Company. This organization is small, but has shown stunning growth and continues on a successful path. In college as Brett chased the wrong things he gained a lot of entrepreneurial experience. He used these skills and a lot of hard work to create something amazing and it is changing the world in insane ways.

 

Soap to Hope

Homelessness is extremely prominent all over the US but especially in New Mexico, no one knows this quite as well as teenager Donovan Smith who, with his Mom, was homeless. Now, Donovan is selling soap to raise money for homeless people in Albequerqe NM.

The TV show Returning the Favor with Mike Rowe surprised Donovan with a store of his own. It was colorful, stocked with ingredients, and had a place for him to create and relax. This gift was a huge step in the success of his company. He has been learning how to manage a business and how to fulfill the demand that is increasing on the daily. His entrepreneurial endeavors has created a business that has donated 20,000 bars of soap to the homeless community in 2017.

Because of his altruistic endeavors Donovan has received a generous donation of $30K for his college fund. This way he is able to go to school while focusing on his business that is helping a community that desperately needs it.

Entrepreneurs can learn from Donovan by turning tragic life experiences into ways to better the community around them. Instead of letting his family’s homelessness be a mark of shame upon himself he decided to turn it into a business that helps prevent others from going through the same struggle.

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Gomez, Adrian. “Teen Soap-Maker Gets $30K for College Fund.” Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque Journal, 9 Jan. 2018, www.abqjournal.com/1116714/tv-series-gives-back-to-abq-teen.html.