Archive for Software

Alinea- Eve Halimi and Anam Lakhani

Have you ever wanted to try out investing but was never taught very well, or do you want to know how to make some money passively? If you’re curious to learn more about investing, then Alinea is the solution for you! Alinea was founded by Anam Lakhani and Eve Halimi when they were only just 24 years old! They came up with the idea in class at Barnard College, Columbia University because they noticed that some of their classmates didn’t want to invest because they didn’t know a lot about it. They also realized that not knowing a lot about investing shouldn’t stop you from trying so they created Alinea, but what is Alinea? Alinea is an investing app that was created with Gen Z’s in mind to help them grow their investments. Alinea is also backed up by Harvard, Goodwater, Kima, Y Combinator and many others. Eve and Anam created this app because it can hard and tricky to understand financial markets, especially today. The internet and technology keep growing, and so do the opportunities to make money. Alinea is a great way for new investors to get more familiar with the stock market and they also offer an “inclusive community for new investors.”

In the app, there’s personalized investing recommendations and caters towards different demographics and generations. Another cool feature of the app is how users can even start investing with as little as $1 for fractional shares of stocks and EFTs. Not every investing app lets you start off with $1, and with the starting price being so low the risks are also pretty low. Alinea also has a feature called “playlists” that are groups of stocks that can be customized based on what your values or lifestyles are. There’s even the option to invest in female-founded companies and many others. Over the years, this app has $2.1 million in funding from a lot of strategic investors and even Hardvard! Alinea is SEC registered investment advisor, FINRA & SIPC Insured as a drivewealth partner, and bank-level security, and SSL & 256-bit encryption. Having all of these features makes investing safer and easier, with lower risks and a whole lot of learning without the stress! With an annual membership only being $96, you can get access to a whole lot of support and learning opportunities on how to invest! Check out their website here!

Sources:

ALINEA INVEST : FOUNDING STORY | Alinea Invest: Social Investing App for GenZ

ALINEA, NEW FEMALE-FOUNDED FINTECH AND Y COMBINATOR BACKED APP, REINVENTS CREATIVE INVESTING FOR GEN Z

Alexander Kulitski – The Teenage Software Entrepreneur

As a college student, Alexander Kulitski recognized the opportunity to innovate the software and web application industry, specifically in smaller businesses and international enterprises. This is how he developed Smart IT which had quick success and profit. One of the projects Alexander and his team worked on was the first online ticket sales service, which is still the most popular service in the country.

Alexander got the idea for the business through the knowledge he gained from participating in an IT club which lead him to freelance work. As a freshman in college, Alexander was earning good income and had a great reputation as a freelancer. He ran a blog and would get multiple work offers a day. Realizing he had some savings to spend, he decided to hire some of his friends to help him keep up with his growing work and rent an office space. This was the beginning of Smart IT.

The entrepreneurial spirit Alexander possesses drives his business on a day to day basis and he is excited to be engaged in how automation is changing our world. He has found purpose in his desire to be part of technology that is changing the world at rapid paces. Alexander values many different methods to help him stay focused and productive day in and day out such as sports, yoga, vacations, and meditation. Curiosity goes hand in hand with these productivity methods due to the industry of technology having such a rapidly changing nature. Alexander is dedicated to being diligent even if something doesn’t work at first. He values quality over quantity, giving your all into everything, and facing the tough decisions head on.

 

I very much admire Alexander’s entrepreneurial traits that demonstrate his passion for business and technology. He is not afraid to take on a project that is difficult, as long as he follows through and gives it his all no matter what. Even from a young age, Alexander pondered how he could transform his passions into a business that could make a difference, and now he has found great success in doing so.

Matthew Mullenweg, Founder of WordPress

Matt MullenwegMatthew Mullenweg is the founder of WordPress, a popular blogging and website platform used by one-third of the internet. Although WordPress is a free product, Mullenweg has still been able to create a thriving business. Mullenweg, being a blogger himself, saw a lack of free blogging platforms. He previously used b2/cafelog, which was free but outdated. Upon seeing this problem, the idea of WordPress was born. Mullenweg, alongside Mike Little, took the codebase of b2/cafelog and began the first version of WordPress in 2003. As other blogging platforms increased their pricing, consumers began looking for alternatives. Many flocked to WordPress because it was free and highly customizable. Once WordPress started to grow, Mullenweg added new features that would attract even more users. Examples include forums, moderation, spam prevention, and themes.

Although WordPress gained massive adoption, Mullenweg did not have a way to gain revenue. Eventually, he created Automattic: a for-profit company that now oversees WordPress. Automattic is a collection of different subsidiaries; however, their most prominent is a premium version of WordPress. They will host your blog, ensure it is secured, maintained, and fast. Automattic also owns various paid extensions for  WordPress. A big one is WooCommerce, which allows WordPress sites to have e-commerce capabilities. It is used by a variety of companies that wish to have an online storefront that is feature-rich and customizable. By introducing these innovations, Mullenweg began to attract companies from all industries to move their sites to WordPress.

Mullenweg has also been innovative in how he runs his business. For many years, he has chosen to operate remotely. Even with 1,747 employees, Automattic continues to be remote first. Mullenweg believes this strategy allows for better productivity and cultivation of talent. He has previously stated:

“It’s one of my life missions to have more companies be distributed. It’s good for the environment. It’s good for opportunity. It’s good for the economy.”

Clearly, Mullenweg has proven himself to be a capable entrepreneur that is able to adapt and innovate. His practice of running a remote business has inspired others to do the same, especially amid the recent pandemic.


Sources:

https://www.yourtechstory.com/2018/08/24/matt-mullenweg-founder-ceo-wordpress/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/12/business/matt-mullenweg-automattic-corner-office.html

https://ma.tt/about/

Russell Ladson – Drop

Many people believe the future is augmented reality and virtual reality. Hundreds of companies are trying to produce the best virtual reality headset. However, Russell Ladson saw potential of using this technology and created a new browsing experience through VR and AR called Drop. Drop is an internet browser that you can download for your VR or AR headset. The best way to describe the experience is thinking of a regular browser that surrounds you 360 degrees. He has earned investments from HTC who will use Drop in their new VR headset. Russell saw that everybody was focusing on the headset itself, and he took a different approach by making a new immersive browser.

MyYearBook.com

Background

Geoff and Catherine Cook are siblings who created a website called Myearbook.com; I have never been on the website but they are doing really well and is thinking about making their company public soon. Geoff was in Harvard when he sold his first business in 2002 and Catherine was still in high school. A few years later they came up with a yearbook but online. They had a problem when they started looking for people in the yearbook, but they didn’t recognize anyone. They also thought that information was useless, so their idea was to make it more accessible and a easier to use but online.

There now making millions of dollars and merged with another website that was like theres but in Latin america.

 

Ashley Qualls

Who Ashley Qualls Is

At the age of just 14 Ashley Qualls made her own website. She first started by uploading Myspace accounts to people and helping students with programming. Then she created this website were students can share around the world on the web. She created this website in 2004.

More About the Company

This website is were students can upload their graphic design works and earn points to were they can excess a virtual mall. In this virtual mall they can buy things that were provided by the company. She only started with $8 to making $70,000 a month, what a success. She saw the that myspace was very popular and wanted to capitalize on an idea she had. She eventually dropped out of school to pursue your business. She was even offered 1.5 million dollars for it but she turned it down. This is an example of someone who took their passions, skills, and knowledge and made an entrepreneurial venture. These are all the things you need to be an entrepreneur. I couldn’t find anything one her today, but i hope she did something to survive out there on the online world.

Ashley Qualls

Ben Pasternak – Flogg

At the age of fifteen, Ben Pasternak developed an app called Impossible Run. He began developing the app during his science class in high school. The app’s purpose was to test the user’s reflex reaction times using geometry. Impossible Run was downloaded 1.3 million times, which rocketed the app to the top of the Apple App Store. After the app gained this traction, many Silicon Valley investors reached out to Pasternak about the possibility of developing some of his other app ideas.

One year after releasing Impossible Run, Ben raised $1 million to begin development on a buying/selling app called Flogg. He wanted to aim the app at teens, so he combined the concepts of Tinder and Ebay into one application. One simply swipes to purchase items on the app. This idea came from seeing many of his teenage friends buying and selling items using Facebook groups.

Ben Pasternak now lives in New York City, where he runs his $2 million application company. With the success of Flogg, Ben was able to hire seven employees, all of whom are under the age of 35. What started as a fun activity in school has evolved into an innovative application development company. Ben’s ideas can serve as a great inspiration to a young entrepreneur.

Brennan Byrne – Clef

Everyone has forgotten a password at some point in their life. Today everything requires that you make an account, and give your personal information to personalize your experience. In this world of overwhelming numbers of passwords, that need to be “strong” in order to be used on certain websites, Brennan Byrne founded Clef. 

Clef is a service used by close to 120,000 websites. It eradicates passwords by using technology where all you have to do is hold your phone screen up to your computer screen. No more passwords or usernames, and your experience is just as customized as before. Formed in Oakland, California with two friends at just 24 Byrne has raised $3.1 million in see funding for Clef. Byrne attended Pomona College where he initially started the company.

Passwords are now becoming a thing of the past with innovations such as this, and things like face ID and fingerprint scanners becoming ordinary on every new device. There had to be another solution to passwords to every website you’ve ever visited just to view the content you want. Although companies using “remember me” features, those aren’t very secure when protecting your valuable information. Passwords will become like written letters, when your kids ask what that thing that on your email is (an envelope of course). With more innovators like Brennan, we will continue to be introduced to things we never knew we needed until now.

Piper: The new way to code!

I remember when I was about 13 or 14 years old, I found an interest in coding. That is writing code on a computer for software development. However, I ran into a major issue. There weren’t many options for me to learn how to do anything spectacular. I constantly became upset because the YouTube videos I was watching did nothing for me. That is why Mark Pavlyukovskyy age 27 created Piper. “Piper is a kit that helps kids learn about coding and electronics by coding their own computer.” Forbes

This kit is able to be bought on Amazon for a fair price. It helps students to learn how to code with a hands on activity kit. This way the students stay engaged with what they are learning and they are able to put what they learn to use. The company has generated over $3 million on Amazon alone, and growing fast!

Built by kids from the inside-out

Robert Nay – Bubble Ball

Robert Nay, a seemingly typical 14 year old, took the mobile game industry by storm back in 2010. He developed the app “Bubble Ball”, which is a physics-based game that involves a series of puzzles to solve and levels to beat. Robert only spent a month coding and researching before the game was introduced to the Apple app store. Within the first two weeks of its release, Bubble Ball was downloaded 2 million times. At the beginning of 2011, the app reached 16 million downloads thanks to the company Ansca Mobile, who chose it as its app of the week. At one point, Bubble Ball took the first-place spot from Angry Birds under the category of top free games in the Apple app store.

It is truly amazing how a someone so young executed on an idea he had that resulted in major success. Robert was not held back by the obstacles, but instead learned what he had to in order to bring his vision to fruition. This story sets a good example for anyone who thinks they want to pursue an idea they have but aren’t sure where to start. What truly determines if something will succeed comes down to taking action and taking on every challenge that’s ahead.