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Andrew Mason – Groupon

Posted by hasseea20

· Sunday, December 13th, 2020

· 2 Comments

The story of Groupon and its main entrepreneur is a dramatic one. Andrew Mason was a web designer paid by tech billionaire Eric Lefkofsky to drop out of grad school and start a business. With his prior experience and classic dropping-out-of-college storyline, Andrew was heading down the road of successful entrepreneurship.

Although he had built enough reputation to warrant a million dollar investment from a former employer, Mason was still in uncharted territory. In an interview with the Gimlet podcast, Mason had said “In the early days we would buy a bunch of academic books on collective action, and me and the other people there would just sit around and read.” The book learning was effective, but there were still some trial and error steps along the way.

While still figuring out what genre of value Groupon would provide its users, Mason and his partners had a few tries and guesses and trips. The original point was to provide an area for people to come up with an idea and go into it together. “I have a plan, but I’m not going to go through with it unless a lot of people do it with me.” Early on, they would seed ideas out to the public and see if they would take. Business was slow, and eventually the users started coming up with their own ideas.

This caused Mason to risk losing his funding; unless he could find an avenue that would provide steady usage and income, Groupon would be shut down. Mason eventually landed on group discount. Groupon sold retail discounts, giving a cut of each sale to the business providing it. Starting off by manually distributing and building relationships Groupon ended up growing faster than Apple, Google, and Facebook. Though he is no longer a part of Groupon, Andrew Mason continues to work as a successful entrepreneur.

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Categories : App, Business, College, Content Entrepreneurs, Creating, eCommerce, Investing, Male Entrepreneurs, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Podcast, Shopping, Startups, Websites

Whateverlife.com – Ashley Qualls

Posted by lindbergmm20

· Monday, November 16th, 2020

· 2 Comments

In 2004, when Ashley Qualls was only fourteen years old, she found herself deeply passionate about graphic design and coding. She grew up in a lower-class household with her single mother and younger sister. However, she was determined that her situation would not define her. She worked hard and created Whateverlife.com, aimed at providing her audience with HTML Tutorials and free MySpace Layouts. Her audience was teenage girls like herself, as she wanted to invoke in others the same passion for graphic design and coding that she had.

Ashley built her website all on her own with no investor, big-wig mentor, or notable source of funds. All she had was her own self-determination. Though she did not have much growing up, the amazing work that she did by herself made her 70,000 dollars in the first month that her website was live. As online foot traffic increased for Ashley, she made modifications to Whateverlife.com that made it possible for viewers to create an account on the website, upload their own projects, and earn reward points that they could use to purchase digital goods for their designs.

Just shy of her company’s third birthday, Whateverlife.com had already recorded between three and four million page views. Ashley and her customers were not the only ones fixed on the betterment of her business, as an anonymous buyer liked the idea so much that he offered 1,500,000 dollars to purchase the website from her. Just months later, Brad Greenspan, the co-founder of MySpace, was so impressed with her work that he offered an even larger sum of money in exchange for the company, not just one time, but twice. Ashley still determined to grow her website even larger, rejected all offers.

In 2006, after being offered millions of dollars for her online HTML Tutorial and MySpace Layout business and turning it down, Ashley purchased a house for her and her family. Unfortunately, shortly after turning seventeen and becoming a millionaire, Ashley was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that caused her to suffer mass gastrointestinal issues. Her prosperous life went into turmoil, not to mention the loss of her business, house, and unborn child. Even throughout all of this hardship, her entrepreneurial spirit never died, and her determination to succeed never faded. She would not give up. In 2015, Ashley got a job that also vanished like sand between her fingers as she could no longer persist in the work environment with her worsening disease.

Though Ashley’s disease stunted her ability to do what she wanted, she was reinvigorated with hope when she read an article in The New Yorker by Megan O’ Rourke. This article made her realize that countless other people also struggle with the same disease as she does. This inspired her to create a blog called SickNotDead. SickNotDead, to this day, provides her with a place to advise, support, and create a community for others that suffer in the same way that she does. It is apparent in her motivational writings that now, more than ever, Ashley’s entrepreneurial spirit is alive and thriving. Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur, and Ashley Qualls is an incredible example of this.

2 Comments

Categories : Art, Blog, Business, Design, Websites

Millionaire House Flipper

Posted by martinnm18

· Monday, November 2nd, 2020

· 1 Comment

Akshay Ruparelia is just your regular 19 year old millionaire from North East London. While moving with his family, he found that commission rates that estate agents charge in London are outrageous, charging up to 2-3% for the sale. Ruparelia wanted to change this, so he did as any 19 year old would do, he made a website. His website, Doorsteps, only charges 99 pounds, compared to an average of 10,000 pounds for an estate agent. After just over a year, the website is now worth 12 million pounds, which is just incredible. His first sale came from someone who just stumbled upon the website in East Sussex, after proving the model worked, the same person sold more land through the website. In total, he has sold 1,500 homes for 120 million pounds, saving people over 1 million pounds in fees.

Ruparelia’s endeavor is definitely proof that there is opportunity everywhere around us. This website was founded simply by him getting an idea while moving houses. The cool thing about this is that it is not an original idea necessarily as there are already estate agents selling property, Ruparelia is just making the process better for the person selling the house. I tend to think that entrepreneurship is strictly creating something brand new that the world has never seen before, but that is not what it is all about as we can see with this story. Entrepreneurship can be making an already known process better, like selling houses in London.

1 Comment

Categories : Business, Housing, Millennial Enrepreneuers, Real Estate, Websites

Matt Mullenweg

Posted by MendenhallGR20

· Sunday, November 1st, 2020

· 2 Comments

Matt Mullenweg is a University of Houston dropout and the founder of Automattic. Automattic is the company behind internet products such as Jetpack, Simplenote, Longreads, Vaultpress, and more. You may not recognize any of these services, but I left out Automattic’s most essential product: WordPress. WordPress is a free and open source system that allows people to create their own webpages, but you probably knew that already. After all, it is used by over 31% of the web, and that includes this site. Mullenweg originally created WordPress as a blog-publishing system when he was just 19 years old. WordPress was a quick success, especially since its competitor, Moveable Type, placed greater restrictions on licensing terms in 2004. In 2005, Mullenweg quit his job at CNET to focus more on WordPress and other related projects. He then formed Automattic, created many new brands, and expanded WordPress to incorporate other types of web content. Mullenweg is, without a doubt, one of the most influential people on the internet.

While it has been 17 years since he created WordPress, Matt Mullenweg is still the CEO and president of Automattic. One thing that impresses me about his is how much he values his customers. He greatly considers the values of WordPress users when developing the brand further. Mullenweg has also structured Automattic with a remote working culture. He believes that this allows his employees to create the most productive and creative environment for themselves. From what I have seen of him, Mullenweg also seems to be very humble and active in his online communities. I feel as though Matt Mullenweg’s entrepreneurial traits are what helped him succeed in his ventures.

2 Comments

Categories : Websites

Catherine Cook – myYearbook

Posted by nicolettice19

· Sunday, September 27th, 2020

· 2 Comments

When Catherine Cook was just 15 years old she and her brother Dave came up with the great idea for the website called myYearbook. The platform was designed to be a way for high school aged students to meet others. The two were inspired by the idea when they were starting at a new high school and were having difficulties making new friends. They got the program up and running by working with people in Mumbai. Catherine says that she and Dave would stay up into the early morning hours just so they could connect with their developers and go over the multiple wireframes they drew out with a paper and pencil.

In April of 2005 the website was launched in their high school. Catherine told ADWEEK in an interview that they faked a few press releases to catch people’s attention and within the first year they had 1 million members. One of the biggest struggles they had to work through with the website was finding a way for people to have fun with the platform regardless if they had multiple friends or no friends on the site. They were able to overcome the hurdle and because of it they had 37.2 million members back in August of 2011.

Later in 2011 the company was sold for 100 million dollars of combined cash and stock shares. At the ripe age of 21 she became a millionaire from a simple idea she had when she was just 15 years old. Today the website was known as MeetMe after the name was changed but has since then rebranded and is now The Meet Group. The Meet Group is still growing and branched into the dating site scene and produced the sites Growlr, NextDate and also purchased the company that owns eharmony.

When Catherine and David came up with the idea I am pretty sure they did not know it would take off like this. It is amazing to see a simple idea such as theirs flourish into something so big. The story of myYearbook is just proof that you are never too young to be an entrepreneur and that no idea should ever be underestimated.

2 Comments

Categories : App, Business, Websites

Glass Half Full

Posted by LinnikED20

· Sunday, September 13th, 2020

· No Comments

For the past decade, young adults are becoming more and more aware of the impact that waste has on the Earth’s oceans and land. There have been multiple startups to help clean the oceans, but what about replenishing the sand on the beaches? Louisiana, the hot spot for hurricane hits, has its coast being greatly eroded every time there is flooding.

But in 2018, three Tulane University students decided to fight for their home. Max Landy, Max Steitz, and Franziska Trautmann started Plant the Peace, a nonprofit organization that “aims to fight climate change at the intersection of education technology and carbon reduction.” This nonprofit’s website has free, educational games that anyone can play. And for every 10 correct answers that a gamer achieves, Plant the Peace plants one tree. This worldwide site is taking a step in the right direction and helping other business become more sustainable as well.

This past year, the students had the idea to replenish Louisiana beaches, and started another nonprofit. How did they begin this? They built a mobile, glass-pulverizing machine that turns glass into sand. It was designed to be mobile so that they could transport it from location to location start the process. Once they began to accumilate large amounts of glass bottles, they bought a warehouse and moved their project inside. They also set up about 20 sites around the city for used glass to be dropped off, and partnered with businesses in the area to house large recycling bins. Over the spring and summer, they touched up and facelifted the warehouse to make it an easier environment to work in. Now, they are working harder than ever to minimize the amount of glass bottles Tulane has, and to make sand for their beaches.

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Categories : Enviornmental, Recycling, Websites

Office Chair Empire

Posted by hatingssj18

· Sunday, September 13th, 2020

· 2 Comments

Sean Belnick was your average fourteen years old buying, trading, and selling Pokemon cards. Sean found out that he could sell his most expensive pokemon on eBay. This sparked Sean’s interest in selling things online, he started selling things online and started to make some good money for a fourteen-year-old. One summer Sean went to go work with his dad at his furniture store. When he was there he realized that he could sell furniture in a fast and easier way. When he discovered this he locked himself in his room for three days and made the website we know today as Bizchair.com. He did this with five hundred dollars for advertising and one hundred dollars for the website. He started by selling a handful of office chairs by drop-shipping them to his customers.

With his advertising, he started to gain more tracking as a company and when he was twenty years old he mad thirty-eight million in revenue. He has sold over twenty-five thousand office chairs to Microsoft, Google, and Abercrombie and Fitch. Sean was really a pioneer in the office chair industry. He was one of the first companies to sell large amounts of office chairs to consumers online. This made the buying process easier for companies by being able to buy large amounts of office chairs from one website. By doing this it streamlined the process of getting office chairs to the customers. Today Bizchairs has so many options for office chairs it appeals to a wide variety of people. Sean Belnick really changed the way people bought office chairs and has made some good money doing it.

2 Comments

Categories : eCommerce, Office Chairs, Online Companies, Uncategorized, Websites

Rediscovering Manliness

Posted by DellickerJn20

· Thursday, September 10th, 2020

· 2 Comments

In a world where supposed “toxic masculinity” is running rampant, the founder of Art of Manliness is taking a stand. Brett McKay through his website promotes male traits, and helps men of all ages to better themselves through articles published on his website.

Brett McKay grew up in a Edmond, OK a suburb of Oklahoma City. He then went on to attend the University of Oklahoma. After receiving a bachelor’s degree he went on to pursue a dream of becoming a lawyer by attending the University of Tulsa College of Law. While at law school, McKay filled his free time with the headwaters of his website. In 2008 he began to write articles in college as and post them but never really had it amount to anything.

The website took off. Pretty soon he was in local media as he was reaching a new demographic. McKay had said that he was looking through some men’s magazines and just felt that none of them were relatable to him so he took it upon himself to start a site that would provide more old-fashioned values and virtues to any kind of man.

Brett McKay really started to focus on the website after he gave up his job in his law office. His audience quickly grew as local media began to cover the new site, to a point today that the Art of Manliness has grown to the largest independent men’s interest site online.

He also branched out a began a series of podcasts that are podcasts that are posted to the site. He invites guests in all fields from businessmen to psychologist to survivalists, etc. He also started merchandising and writing books.He even ran a

Youtube channel with instructional videos for a period.

The purpose of his site is to cater to all kinds of interests. When you open the site you never know what you might find. Brett McKay and his team try to find something to reach men with any interest as along as it fit their virtues.

2 Comments

Categories : Websites

The Story of Joshua Dziabiak: Founder of Media Catch

Posted by ThompsonNS20

· Wednesday, September 9th, 2020

· No Comments

A little history to his story:

Dziabiak was born in Freedom, Pennsylvania, in 1987. He lived on a 20-acre farm from where his parents ran their own septic-cleaning business.

Dziabiak was first introduced to technology when his family bought a computer when he was 12 years old. After this, he begged them to get Internet after one of his friends asked him if he had a website.

He left school during his freshman year of high school to further invest in his business, turning to home schooling where he taught himself using CD ROMs.

Media Catch Career:

Dziabiak began his entrepreneurial career at the age of 14. He used a dial-up connection to surf the Internet and designed his own personal website. When he was this young, most companies didn’t have Internet and didn’t know how to make a website to promote their business. He took advantage of this situation and started charging companies a couple hundred dollars for him to make a website for their organization.

This idea exploded by the time he turned 16 and made enough money that he could hire 14 full-time employees. He named the company Media Catch and got his name out into the business world.

This company was such a hit that he sold it for a million dollars, making him a millionaire before the age of 18.

He used the money from Media Catch to start some other companies, but the focus of this post is on Media Catch.

What makes Joshua Dziabiak different?:

Dziabiak is unique in the fact that he took advantage of the start of the Internet and created a company that was in high demand.

Dziabiak’s was interested in technology every since he was a kid and used this interest to drive him to create a million dollar company.

He took an idea that he had and acted on it, unlike most people who try to start their own company. Most people are afraid of failure which blocks them from some of their most creative ideas.

Dziabiak’s impact on me:

His story showed me that age is just a number when it comes to entrepreneurship. I, like many other people, have always thought of entrepreneurs as people who are older and more educated on business principles.

Dziabiak shows that a good idea can take you to many places if you are willing to put in the work and believe in your idea.

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Categories : Millennial Enrepreneuers, Uncategorized, Websites

Russell Ladson – Drop

Posted by Samuel Davies

· Thursday, December 12th, 2019

· No Comments

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.

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Categories : App, Software, Websites