Cary K Huang is a creator whose journey started sooner that most would expect. Cary, in collaboration with his twin brother Michael, created an animated web series called Battle for Dream Island. Their first entry in this series, “BFDI 1a: Take the Plunge” was released to YouTube, beginning the story of the original twenty living objects and the host and establishing that the contestants would battle to win a beautiful island. It did not receive a wide viewership at first, as it was through the steady persistence of their uploads that their audience would grow. Cary and Michael were twelve when the first episode was released on the first day of 2010, and over the course of exactly two years and twenty-four episodes totaling nearly four hours of animation, they gained more than a thousand subscribers.
The fans of Battle for Dream Island and a similar YouTube show known as Inanimate Insanity would come to be called the Object Show Community. This online community, as is the case with others like it on the net, produces large amounts of fan made content. Some may consider the OSC, especially as it exists today, to be a self-sustaining vortex of inspiration, animation, and creativity.
The brothers’ journey in online animation had a good early chapter. It was followed by several false starts in the form of sequel seasons that did not get far off the ground. Through most of his time in high school and college education at Stanford, Cary was too busy to focus on animation. During this time, he was able to experiment with code in some interesting projects. It was not until a flurry of new episodes releasing in 2017 and 2018 that Battle for Dream Island was ready to return, this time with a far larger production team and renewed art style. Following a hiatus that can be attributed to a lack of time at the end of Cary’s college career, Battle for BFDI (aka. BFB) was able to release episodes regularly until it reached its conclusion.
The BFDI team is still active today, and is currently producing the prequel season Battle for Dream Island Again and the sequel season The Power of Two simultaneously. Each new animated episode receives millions of views. Though the world and the scope of their creation has expanded greatly, Cary and Michael’s original vision from when they were twelve years old still persists in their modern efforts.
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.
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.
This idea of simplicity is very new and unique. Some companies find it concerning. Others, however, are embracing it. They see the benefit of letting another company maintain their infrastructure so they can focus on their business. Facebook, McDonald’s, The Washington Post, Uber, and Tripadvisor are examples of companies that work with Vercel. Raunch also wants to make the development process more collaborative. This can be seen in the Vercel dashboard, which allows teams to see what others are working on and view previews of the changes.
Unlike other companies, Raunch believes anyone should be able to host a site for free. As such, Vercel offers a free tier that allows customers to host unlimited sites within reasonable limits. Paid plans are based on the number of team members a company has. This pricing is perfect for big companies and startups alike. It is also competitive with other platforms. Many have moved their sites to Vercel because of this reason alone. Another attractive feature is Vercel’s global network, which allows customers to distribute their website across the world within seconds. This is a particularly interesting innovation. Before, companies had to choose a single location for their servers. Vercel’s technology allows for multiple locations, each being optimized, updated, and maintained automatically.
Matthew 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.