Lino is using his skills in engineering and design to create a unique shoe that has a utility other than just protecting your feet. The pain of having to carry around a portable charger drove him to make this product. He looked at the shoe industry and instead of just making another regular shoe. He saw the pain of having a dead phone and created a solution for it by using the kinetic energy you use while walking. Something you already do anyways so he had the idea of engineering a way to put it to use. Lino showcases an entrepreneur’s ability to take a pain and find a new and better way to solve it. Especially in a the saturated shoe market. As well as the ability to design a brand-new product that finds a way to break through the market saturation. He also has a drive for social good. Stating that the idea also came up by thinking about a way to generate power during a storm or power outage. This product can provide homes with a way to charge their phones during these events to stay connected with others. Giving it the potential to be life-saving in dire situations.
Archive for Technology – Page 4
Mia Monzidelis wanted a pony. But for kids like her who lived in the city, that dream wouldn’t soon be fulfilled. With a strong passion for horses, she invented the idea for Power Pony after having received a Hoverboard for Christmas. The young inventor noticed that if she set her stuffed pony over the hoverboard and sat down, her feet on the hoverboard foot pads, she could ride the pony around. What started as a child’s simple idea to pass the time, soon became a thriving business with the encouragement of her parents and the guidance of designers and patent attorneys.
In structure, the Power Pony is nearly identical to her original idea, plus some bells and whistles. It is a small plush pony attached to a chargeable Hoverboard-like motor. The child then puts his/her feet on the engine’s foot pads and can ride the plush horse around. The pony is even iOS compatible with its own app and boasts lights and fancy sound effects. The Power Pony became first available in the summer of 2021 and has turned out to be a fantastic solution for children who live in the city. The company has since sold almost five thousand mechanical ponies around the nation and in response to her success, Mia Monzidelis has donated part of her profits to the Family and Children’s Association of Garden City.
As an entrepreneur, Monzidelis is brilliant because she decided to capitalize on what young children do all the time… make do with what they have. By using her childlike creativity and putting two of her favorite possessions together, she invented a great business, thus teaching other entrepreneurs that great ideas don’t have to be something brand new, it can be a combination of things that already exist, things that you love.
Hillary Yip is from Hongkong where she went to school in Kellett school. Hillary came up with her millionaire idea when her mother sent Hillary and her brother to summer camp. The summer camp they were sent to was to help them speak Mandarin more fluently. After Hillary came home she thought of an idea like her summer camp, where everyone could connect with each other from around the world. She then started to enter her idea into several competitions and won all of them. Then she created her company and branched it out to sixty-plus countries.
“People treat me as a kid sometimes I get that. I’m 15, but I prefer being treated as an adult because I’ve had some experiences. I’m still learning, but that doesn’t mean you should count me out as immature.” says Hillary.
She created an education app where you can talk to others around the world about topics you are passionate about while learning about the other person’s culture through their conversations. The main purpose of this app is to help with learning a language in a fun way. This is very smart because most kids are not very interested in learning different languages, but when you can talk about interesting topics it makes learning more fun. When creating this MinorMynas Yip Hillary was just ten years old. It came out on IOS in 2017 and has over 65,000 downloads worldwide.
Hillary truly shows how anyone who has drive and motivation can pursue their dreams. Hillary even though she was very young still pursued her goal and proved to all the people telling her she was too young wrong. Hillary shows a very important entrepreneurial trait of courage. Hillary to this day is still perfecting MinorMynas.
James Griffith, founder, and CEO of MOUS phone cases was able to do something that not many other companies have been able to do. With skyrocketing purchases of smartphones in the 21st century, it has become almost a habit now for people to buy a case as a companion for their thousand-dollar pocket computers.
Now there are millions of phone cases out there, but a vast majority of them crack, scratch, scuff, or sometimes don’t even do their sole job of protecting the phone. I personally have had this happen to myself and many friends, where they will drop their phones and it will be instantly visible that there is damage. Apple too is not helping much with their $400+ screen repairs for the newer model iPhones. We needed a solution.
Then in 2014, James Griffith came along with a revolutionary advancement in the case industry. He saw that people were not satisfied with the care that their phone cases were providing, and all of the cases that were protective were ugly, bulky, and uncomfortable to hold. This is why he created MOUS. MOUS is a revolutionary case for smartphones and smart devices with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. They also guarantee that the phones are completely break-proof up to 45-feet! With a sleek and classy external design, these tiny tanks are all anyone could or would ever need. The company is also very smart when it comes to commercializing as they have thrown the case onto rocks, dropped it out of a helicopter, and done many more extreme tests to demonstrate the durability. I have seen them on Instagram, Twitter, and youtube. It is needless to say that this company is going places and with the journey ahead, you might want a MOUS case too.
At the age of 17, while watching a video of Michael J. Fox, Erin Smith noticed something that she couldn’t get off her mind. “Whenever a Parkinson’s patient would laugh or smile, it came off as really emotionally distant,” she says. With this in mind she contacted clinicians and caregivers and found they’d noticed similar facial expressions in some of their patients often years before these patents were officially diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Erin Smith set to work on developing a diagnosis system that uses AI to view changes in facial expressions over time to detect disorders like Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s is a difficult disorder to detect and diagnose but Erin’s new system, which she named FacePrint, has an 88 percent accuracy rate. Erin is receiving support and funding from pharmaceutical companies as well as from the Michael J. Fox Foundation. As one of twenty young innovators selected for the Thiel Fellowship, Erin will be on leave from her university studies while she completes research and her technology undergoes clinical trial at Stanford University, where she is enrolled.
Erin Smith has also done her own TEDx talk which can be watched here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pS3UftoWpo&t=124s
Erin Smith’s research and innovation is very impressive and inspirational, she saw a possibility to create something that would help people and instantly got to work.
To say that our ecosystem is important would be an understatement. It is absolutely vital to the world’s health and the care of our human society. Forests are one of the main factors in supporting a strong ecosystem, but deforestation is a major problem that many countries face around the world. Deforestation is when woodlands are purposefully cleared for agricultural expansion, logging, or infrastructure growth. However, one new entrepreneur, Angelique Ahlstrom, hopes to improve the ecosystem with her own business, Flash Forest.
Cofounded by Angelique Ahlstrom, Flash Forest is a “Canadian reforestation company that uses UAV technology, automation, and ecological science to regenerate ecosystems on a global scale.” She started the company this year in 2021 and uses advanced technology of artificial intelligence, Plant Science, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and geographic information systems (GIS) to map, analyze, and automatically plant tree seeds in damaged forest areas. This company’s technology costs less and is safer and faster than other traditional methods. Flash Forest is actively working towards the goal of planting more than one billion trees by 2028 to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and restore worldwide ecosystems. They have tested 18 species of trees in planting trials to achieve biodiversity in forests. Flash Forest works with different organizations and industry partners to help plant trees and fulfill their “carbon offset pledges.” They even work with government industries to help them meet their reforestation targets that are expensive and difficult to complete.
Angelique says, “Our motivation is to have a tangible impact on climate change and all species within our lifetime, to revolutionize the reforestation industry on a truly planetary scale.” This is a very ambitious goal put forth by Flash Forest, but the first step to develop a socially minded business is to have a goal and fall in love with the problem, not the solution! Currently, Canada is one of the world’s leaders in sustainable forest management and Angelique aims to continue this with her company. She found a problem and used her passion for the environment to cause true social impact with her innovative brand and design.
Brian Chesky created Airbnb in his own house, supplying an Airbed and Breakfast to guests for only $80 a night. Being unemployed, this allowed him and Joe Gebbia to pay for their rent. Chesky believed the idea of Airbnb could evolve into a digital platform. After launching it the first time, he and Gebbia noticed it struggled to gain trust and traction. Chesky has publicly shared this was a stressful time for him. He remembers having a binder full of credit cards, an enormous amount of debt, and trouble attracting investors. During the Democrat National Convention in Denver, however, Airbnb started to gain success. This was mainly because a level of trust existed between Obama supporters opening up their homes for other Obama supporters.
As bookings started coming in, Gebbia and Chesky contemplated what their hosts should provide for breakfast. They decided on their own branded cereal: Obama O’s and Cap’n McCains, which were the two presidential candidates at the time. Chesky contacted a variety of cereal companies, including Kellogg’s and General Mills. Yet, they were uninterested. To improvise, Chesky and Gebbia bootstrapped the cereal by handling the designs, supplies, and logistics independently. This endeavor had decent success, amassing $30,000 for Airbnb.
The climax of Airbnb’s beginning was their first round of funding from Y Combinator: an incubator that provides mentorship and financial support for early startups. Since then, Airbnb has grown to become a $100 billion-dollar company. When sharing his story, Chesky confesses this success did not come easy. Many people told him Airbnb was the worst idea ever. Chesky has said:
We had really smart, credible people out their telling us “No.” Had we listen to them, there might not be Airbnb today.
Airbnb shows how an entrepreneur must be flexible, persevere, and learn from failure. If an entrepreneur neglects these attitudes, their business may not last.
Sources
https://getpaidforyourpad.com/blog/the-airbnb-founder-story/
https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-ceo-brian-chesky-30-billion-startup-2016-8
Anthony Casalena founded Squarespace after noticing the difficulties of building a website. He was a web designer himself, having a familiarity with technologies such as HTML, Java, and CSS. He thought he could make the process more accessible, enabling anyone to make their own website. While being a student at the University of Maryland, Casalena started building Squarespace. It started as and still is, a drag-and-drop website builder.
Casalena’s beginnings as an entrepreneur are similar to that of Mark Zuckerburg. Both started technology startups in college and gained considerable success. Like Facebook, Casalena has led Squarespace to gain a large following and even a place on the stock market. Squarespace has allowed thousands of businesses to build their own website, eCommerce stores, and blogs. To date, Squarespace is hosting over a million websites. This makes it one of the largest website platforms in its industry.
A unique feature of Squarespace is its pre-built designs and all-in-one solutions. Although there are competitors that operate similarly, Squarespace websites are distinctive. Animations and colors are minimalistic. They can also be implemented rather quickly. Previously, building your own website led to a poorly poor product. Squarespace has enhanced this process, allowing users to more beautiful and complete designs. Casalena has mentioned this, stating:
I believe that minimalism is a process. It’s not an aesthetic. It’s not black and white. It’s the thoughtfulness that goes into creating these things.
More recently, Casalena is working on expanding Squarespace by acquiring other startups. The most notable acquisitions by Squarespace have been Tock, a reservation application, and Acuity, a scheduling utility. This shows Squarespace’s goal of making an all-in-all tool for business owners and their online presence.
Overall, Casalena shows how a business can take on multiple markets, have humble beginnings, and be known for its design.
Sources
https://tracxn.com/d/acquisitions/acquisitionsbySquarespace
https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2021/04/20/squarespace-founder-is-a-billionaire-ahead-of-direct-listing/
In 2005, Catherine Cook and her brother Dave were just two normal high school students without any kind of technology or business experience. One day, the two of them sat down to go through their Yearbook, as many students do, when they had the idea of combining their yearbook with the current technology boom. They proposed doing this by digitalizing yearbooks and putting them on the internet to create an interactive experience.
The pair decided to approach their older brother who was already a very successful entrepreneur and was interested enough in their idea to invest money into it and help them get the idea off the ground. I think looking back on this story, and their brother’s belief in this idea, you can see the foresight that these young entrepreneurs had to recognize that the digital age was coming and if they could harness that, it would take them very far.
The business began to grow significantly, and in 2008 it was the fastest growing social media site in the U.S. and had 11 million members. Over the years Catherine has been a huge innovator through MyYearbook and has been constantly brainstorming features to keep it popular and current. The most recent innovation the company has done is a huge rebrand with a new name, MeetMe. A huge takeaway that Catherine has mentioned from this experience is staying true to your vision, if you do this, no one will be able to knock you down all the way, and the growth of your business can be limitless.
Sources
https://vanitystardom.com/founder-of-myyearbook-catherine-cook/
Catherine Cook – How MyYearbook.com Was Founded (businessideaslab.com)
Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most famous company founders in American history, but his story is more than just that of a successful businessman. Zuckerberg was also very young when he started Facebook. Amazingly, Zuckerberg was just 19 years old when his idea came to life, which has become one of the largest companies in the world. In 2004, Zuckerberg, along with Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, who were also students, made Facebook a reality. The idea for Facebook came in 2003, when Zuckerberg created a short lived website called Facemash. Facemash ultimately fizzled out quickly, but its successor, known as The Facebook is a different story. The site allowed college students (specifically at Harvard) to create public profiles with pictures and personal information, allowing for online connections between students.
The site quickly took off. Soon, students from Yale and Stanford joined, and Facebook spread from there, initially to only students. In June of 2004, there were more than 250,000 profiles on The Facebook. Off of this foundation, Zuckerberg grew his company and his website exponentially. From 2004 to 2006, Zuckerberg’s website, now known simply as Facebook, gained features such as the Wall and the ability to tag people in photos. Additionally, in 2006, Facebook moved beyond being a service exclusively for students, and added the ability for anyone 13 or older to join. Facebook went public in 2012, when Zuckerberg was just 28, and soon had a market value of $102.4 billion. After it’s Facebook’s first day on the market, Zuckerberg was worth over $19 billion. Today Zuckerberg is 37, and is the 5th richest person in the world.