I am a huge Yeti fan, and always kind of wondered how the brand started and grew so prosperously. Turns out, it’s been around longer than I expected. In 2006, two brothers were completely over dealing with low quality coolers. Roy and Ryan Seiders crafted an indestructible cooler from their father’s garage, and then launched the business from the same location. Yeti’s popularity grew quickly due to its actually well-made nature, the right social media testimonials, and classic word of mouth. Their cooler is now an outdoor staple, coveted by many and sometimes sold at wildly high prices. In 2014, ten years ago, they launched a new line of Rambler Tumblers and the Hopper soft cooler line. The Seiders just kept expanding, and now their company is worth 3.8 billion dollars.

The concepts of Yeti’s creation apply beautifully to classic entrepreneurship principles. The Seiders simply had a problem that they began with: cheep, breakable coolers. They got so tired of this inconvenience that pouring out hard work and countless time seemed worth it.

https://www.yeti.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=__iv_p_1_g_27908074949_c_650688525329_w_kwd-102062560_n_g_d_c_v__l__t__r__x__y__f__o__z__i__j__s__e__h_9005925_ii__vi__&key_yeti&&utm_id=google_475534229_27908074949_650688525329_kwd-102062560_c&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAsOq6BhDuARIsAGQ4-zhh-uc9w2w-ptiifVKB5mGT_Wha4t7G6LyJioqSOJj5Pj8gNixclQQaAkWiEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

(not sure why the link is CRAZY long; it’s just to their home page!)

Vera Wang is a popular, and well-known fashion designer, who is most famous for her wedding dresses. She started as a designer and evolved from there. After she had graduated from college she worked as an editor for Vogue magazine for 15 years.

As mentioned above Vera Wang’s entrepreneurial ideas came when she wasn’t able to find a wedding dress for herself that she loved. She had opened her first bridal boutique. Vera Wang didn’t just design dresses, she had built a whole brand that included everything from perfumes to accessories, etc. What makes her journey so inspiring to me, is that she took many risk, and didn’t just settle for one job that she didn’t feel passionate about. She took a large risk but changing her career which ultimately expanded her brand into many different areas. Today Vera Wang is a large designer brand that is worn by fashion designers, celebrities, brides, and etc. She shows me and others that you do not have to settle for one thing and entrepreneurship is a ton of networks, and if done creatively, and effectively it can become a big.

Wax | Truth Tellers | Liberty Mutual Insurance Commercial

Lily Born’s grandfather, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, often had trouble with normal drinking cups, which led to him frequently spilling things. Rather than seeing this as an unresolvable problem, Lily saw an opportunity to help. She designed the Kangaroo Cup, a spill-resistant cup that allows those with similar issues to remain independent. The product has since become very popular and has helped countless people with these issues. Lily’s story is a powerful reminder that entrepreneurship can start with the idea and desire to solve a personal problem. By turning her empathy into a real product, Lily helped her grandpa and created a successful business that has helped so many people by using innovation.

If you’ve been part of broad Christian circles for a long time, the brand He Would Love First is probably pretty familiar to you. It’s staple bracelets have been popular among Christians all over for at least the last several years. They are a simple, woven, and adjustable; the most common ones have either WWJD (meaning what would Jesus do) or HWLF (He would love first) on them. The brand / movement was began and developed by a young entrepreneur named Casey Shultis. He was captivated by the gospel and wanted his life to reflect the love of Jesus. Shultis ended up creating this simple emblem to remind himself and others everywhere of the simple love God allows us to live in. He Would Love First now represents the greatness of Jesus’ consistent reaction of love in every situation. It is a wearable reminder and has spread into a way to share the gospel with anyone who sees it.

I was introduced to He Would Love First in high school through a fundraiser. My neighbor’s friend was selling these bracelets to raise money for her missions trip. I wanted to support her and gained so much more. Now I have a few products from the company, both clothes I bought myself and was gifted. Their social media reach is pretty unmatched, and as far as I can tell, they have been able to keep up with changing trends over the years.

He Would Love First is a beautiful, Christ-centered example of redemptive retail that demonstrates many amazing characteristics of entrepreneurship.

https://hewouldlovefirst.com/

https://hewouldlovefirst.com/blogs/news/about-us-page?srsltid=AfmBOorgygmAuCOX-iqlzAPhu7cAZLhLxbzKF6sJ2giSpJ9kz-wrIwwk

We’ve all heard of the explosive growth of crypto currencies in recent years, but in all truth, many of us know little about them. We hear tales of riches, of untold billions, of vast immeasurable fortunes, of rags to riches, but who is responsible for all this? Who creates the coins we hear so much about? Well, everyone knows bitcoin, and its founder Satoshi Nakamoto, but there are a vast amount of other coins that have had huge impacts on the cryptocurrency market and bear attention. Ethereum is a coin often passed over in favor of the more popular meme coins and giants, but is an extremely popular coin among crypto traders and has an extremely interesting background story. 

Vitalik Buterin was born on January 31, 1994, in Kolomna, Russia. When he was a young kid, merely six years old, his family moved to Canada. Vitalik was quickly recognized for having talent, particularly in the areas of mathematics and programming, and was rapidly enrolled in a gifted education program. Eleven years later, when he was 17 years old, his father first introduced him to bitcoin, a concept that Vitalik instantly recognized for its potential. In 2013, Vitalik made his first big entrance into the cryptocurrency world with the founding of Bitcoin Magazine. The magazine quickly gained popularity, becoming one of the most read sources on the topic, and continues to be well read today. However, Vitalik did not stop there. In 2013 he proposed the idea for Ethereum, a decentralized platform enabling the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications. After pitching the idea he was awarded a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Institute that allowed him to focus solely on the creation of Ethereum. After 2 more years of hard work, the Ethereum blockchain officially launched in mid 2015. Vitalik’s invention was very well received, and today he has been featured in publications such as Forbes “40 Under 40” and “ 30 Under 30” lists, has an estimated net worth of over 1 billion, and has established himself as one of the most prominent figures in the cryptocurrency community.

When I think of robot lizards, I tend to think of something rather futuristic, sci-fi, and scary. An alien army, a science experiment gone wrong, the next blockbuster dystopian movie, etc. But when Gecko Robotics thinks of lizard robots, they think of something entirely different. Jake Loosararian first came up with his idea whilst visiting a power plant during his college experience at Grove City College. Robots that could crawl up the side of infrastructure (providing the lizard inspiration) and inspect key infrastructure without risking human life and while limiting the amount of time plants and other infrastructure have to shut down. 

After graduating from college, Jake launched his company, Gecko Robotics, with the help of his co-founder Troy Demmer in 2013. While at first it was a difficult proposition, with Lossararian and Demmer bootstrapping it up from the ground, Gecko Robotics began to find its legs after participating in YCombinators incubator class of 2016. Due to this, Loosararian received much needed support, including publicity, connections, and an acquisition offer. However, they turned this offer down in favor of continuing to build their company themselves. 

Today, Gecko Robotics is worth 600 million dollars, develops robots providing thousands of times more data than past processes, and improves safety in many key infrastructure plants. Loosarar

Jake Loosararian, found of Gecko Robotics

ian put together two seemingly unrelated things into a process that made him a star in the tech world. He is a fantastic example of how a network of ideas, combined with a single moment of inspiration, can launch a robotic lizard empire.

Brian Kelly is known as The Points Guy, and his website, which he created as a young entrepreneur, combines information on how to maximize credit card points with travel guides for areas all around the world. It shows people how easy it is to save money and travel affordably.

Kelly grew up with a consultant for a father, meaning that his father was constantly traveling for work. His father used the frequent flyer points he saved up to take his family on vacations, which fostered family bonding time and created an appreciation for credit card points in his son. Right out of college, Kelly landed a job at Morgan Stanley that had him traveling half the year, so he gained personal experience bringing in lots of hotel and airline points.

There came a point in Kelly’s life where his coworkers were constantly coming over to his cubicle to ask him for help booking their family vacations. He got advice from a friend to start up a blog using WordPress, and Kelly was off to the races with his dream of sharing his knowledge. He eventually gave in to a friend telling him to put ads on his blog website, and he began making a couple hundred dollars a month. The number of readers continued to rise to the point where Kelly was noticed by Chase Bank, who offered him an opportunity to make a $150 commission for each credit card that a reader signed up for via one of his links. He began making enough money from these commissions that he was able to quit his day job and he eventually was able to sell his company, although he maintains creative control of the site.

It is impressive to see how naturally it all came to Kelly. Of course, he was dramatically influenced by his parents. After that, everything seemed to just fall into place, like he wasn’t even trying. All he did was pursue his passion. It’s easy to be inspired by a guy who is out there doing what he loves and making money off of it. Hopefully, that can be a reality for the rest of us if we learn how to pursue our passions with all we’ve got.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/living/7-entrepreneurs-who-built-businesses-off-their-love-of/311713

In 2010, Ben Francis was your typical college student, late nights spent on homework, late nights spent with friends, and late nights spent in the gym. Francis was driven by a desire for fitness, only for his personal fitness, but for the fitness industry in general. Driven by a desire to have a part in the growing fitness industry, Francis tried to break into it with several products. First, an assortment of fitness apps, next a social media app, and then finally, after many ups and downs, the very first version of what would become the gymshark empire. 

Gymshark began with a very humble start, simply drop shipping thousands of various supplements. It was a slow start, months before it got its first order, but after a long wait it began to take off. After some time selling supplements, Gymshark expanded to drop shipping fitness clothing as well. However, most gym clothing was baggy and built for peak level lifters – not the average gymgoer. Realizing this problem, Francis moved to manufacturing clothing himself, sewing it on a machine, screen printing, and delivering it as a one man machine. Slowly, Gymshark clothing grew. An unpolished, off the cuff clothing business began to metamorphosize into the giant it is today. A little later, Gymshark reached out to some of the most prominent athletes of the time, and they loved it. Those athletes signed on as the very first Gymshark athletes, promoting the brand and bringing further success. Francis and Gymshark continued to take the risk for expansions, designing new products that brought even more attention in the fitness world. In 2013 they did £30,000 in a mere thirty minutes with the release of their Luxe Tracksuit. 

Today, Ben Francis is one the world’s youngest billionaires, a self made success story due to grit, a love for his industry, and never being afraid to take the leap.

2A29F65 Ben Francis, founder of the gym wear company Gymshark

Have you ever been bored in school? SO much so that you thought to yourself, “I think I should develop an app!” Well, the now 25-year-old Australian Benjamin Pasternak had that exact thought! At the age of 13, Pasternak was bored in a science class at school and chose to fend off boredom by designing his first mobile app, Impossible Rush. After showing his idea to an online friend who was an IOS engineer, they had a game created in a matter of hours. Soon enough, millions were downloading the app. At one point, the app was ranked no. 16 on the US App Store (IOS) top charts. In January of 2015, he was recognized by both Facebook and Google who offered him internship opportunities. Surprisingly, he declined these opportunities. Following this surprise up with another, he decided to drop out of high school and move to New York to accept venture capital funding and start his first business, Flogg, at the age of 15. Flogg, an app for young people to buy and sell, launched in 2016 and quickly become no. 1 trending app on the US App Store. Later in 2016, Pasternak decided to pivot. He promptly shut down Flogg and focused on a new app, Monkey. This new app, Monkey, allowed teenagers to video chat with like-minded people. Very quickly, in early 2017, Monkey raised 2 million in funding. 20 million users and 20 billion calls on Monkey later, Monkey also reached no. 1 trending app on the US App Store. Yet, there is more! Pasternak co-founded SIMULATE in 2018. SIMULATE aims to improve the world’s positive food system. In June 2021, it was reported that SIMULATE raised over 50 million in funding. From one raging success to another, Pasternak’s story is inspiring and shows incredible entrepreneurial thinking. The timing of pivots, the ideas for what people want, as well as the pure drive to create something and create it well all show vital pieces of entrepreneurship at work.

Picture this: You are at a fashion show for New York Fashion Week. You watch as models show off the clothing of their designers in all their glamour. Later, you find out that one of the designers was a 13-year-old girl. Sounds like a made-up story, right? No 13-year-old girl could design clothing well enough for it to be part of New York Fashion Week, right? Wrong. Isabella Rose Taylor showed her Spring 2015 collection at New York Fashion Week when she was only 13.

Teen designer Isabella Rose Taylor makes New York Fashion Week debut | Daily Mail Online

What got Taylor to this point? Well, in an interview, Taylor said that her parents always encouraged her to follow her dreams and told her she did not have to wait to be her own boss and do what she loved. Taylor also said that she had been interested in art from a very young age, and at the age of 8, began incorporating “mixed media” into her fingerpainting. She also attended a summer sewing camp where she fell in love with the art. After the camp, she began making clothing for friends and family, which ended up becoming a full on business. Taylor used social media, specifically Facebook, to grow her business. Her Facebook profile “garnered the attention of local news outlets and eventually major national programs including the Today show.”

Taylor went on to gain more recognition and success. For example, she was invited to speak at Dell’s annual gathering of 800 leading female entrepreneurs. Today, Taylor still has success due to the company she started at age 13.