At 20 years old, Daniel DiPiazza was comfortable. He wasn't making millions of dollars at his hourly wage job, but he wasn't struggling for money either. Like a lot of people in their early 20s, he just didn't know what he wanted to do. While the life he led was fine, it was a never ending cycle of making enough money to pay the bills, and that was about it. It wasn't exciting, more than anything it was dissatisfying, and after a few years, DiPiazza found himself restless and wanting more out of...
May 04, 2017•51 min
One of the best ways for an entrepreneur to come up with a great business idea is by scratching their own itch. If something's giving you trouble, it's likely that other people out there are feeling the same way. That's how it all started for Mike McDerment, back when he created FreshBooks . At the time, McDerment wasn't looking to create a new business, or invent some sort of revolutionary product to sell. He was just trying to solve his own problem—he was tired of using Microsoft Excel as a wa...
Apr 26, 2017•35 min
Many of us have a secret desire to make a living by following our passions, but not all of us have a passion quite like Vanessa Van Edwards'. Back in college, she loved reading academic and scientific journals. She tore through them. That might lead you to believe that she wanted to become an academic or work in a lab somewhere, but Van Edwards also had the soul of an entrepreneur. Even as a young adult, she had several successful businesses under her belt. Listening to that entrepreneurial spir...
Apr 23, 2017•41 min
When Jim Kwik was in kindergarten, he suffered a terrible fall that resulted in head trauma and a brain injury. This would come to define the rest of Kwik's early life as he grew up suffering from learning difficulties. He constantly struggled to keep up with the rest of his peers and never quite found the ability to focus enough and learn fast enough, all of which was exacerbated by the fact that he didn't even have a fully functioning memory. "I was the boy with the broken brain," Kwik says. A...
Apr 20, 2017•1 hr 8 min
At 18, Gerard Adams dropped out of college after one semester. That semester was all it took to confirm what Adams knew all along. Like all entrepreneurs, he just wasn't built to follow the rules. The idea of getting a degree, to eventually get a job, to eventually retire, wasn't going to be the life for him. "That's when I made the decision to ... really put the pressure on myself to learn how to build businesses on my own," Adams says. While most people would go out and look for mentors by joi...
Apr 12, 2017•59 min
At 23, Katelyn Gleason faced, like many people in their early 20s, an existential crisis. She just didn't know what she wanted to do. "I started thinking about jobs. I was like 'God if I'm going to have to do this for the rest of my life it better be something I really care about, that can be my life's work, that I can really invest all of my time and all my energy into,'" Gleason says. Her first step was to start reading the biographies of some of the greatest individuals in human history—Marie...
Apr 06, 2017•50 min
If it seems like entrepreneurs are getting younger every year, it's because they are. More millennials are turning toward entrepreneurship as a fulfilling career choice, passing on the traditional route of finding employment with some company. As the co-founder of DoorDash , Andy Fang is no different, part of the new school of entrepreneurs getting into the startup world while still in college. In 2013, Fang and his three co-founders were still students in Stanford when they had an idea—to creat...
Apr 03, 2017•42 min
Jordan Harbinger is one of the most influential people in entrepreneurship today, thanks to his popular podcast The Art of Charm . His show recently hit its 10th anniversary, and Harbinger has interviewed some of the greatest minds and personalities in the startup space and more. Starting off as a law school graduate who landed a job as a financial attorney on Wall Street, it didn't take long for Harbinger to become quickly disillusioned with the life that being a big shot attorney offered. With...
Mar 29, 2017•51 min
The inspiring story behind Simple Green Smoothies started on a playground, with two mothers watching their kids play together. At the time, Jen Hansard and Jadah Sellner were both first-time mothers, and they shared a desire to get back into the workforce. But they decided they were going to do it on their own terms and by following their passions. In 2007, they officially made the jump from being playdate partners to professional collaborators when they began working together on a parenting blo...
Mar 26, 2017•59 min
Back in 2010, Girish Mathrubootham was a pretty successful tech guy, having risen up the ranks of a company to VP of Product Management. But that didn't mean he was immune to bad customer service. After spending months and months going back and forth with a company on an insurance claim, in the end, all that was achieved was Mathrubootham feeling helpless and frustrated. He took to a popular online forum to air his frustrations, and that was when he got his first taste of what it means to harnes...
Mar 22, 2017•37 min
For as long as he can remember, Tenko Nikolov has been obsessed with computers. From his very first computer at the age of 7, he fell in love with the simple green and black screen and was fascinated with all that this technology could offer. Of course, he also got into some trouble, even accidentally hacking into a large US corporation's network with a friend at the age of 13. After a few days of fun messing with their systems and bragging to their friends, the duo eventually sent an email to t...
Mar 15, 2017•42 min
A lot of people can recognize an opportunity, but what separates an entrepreneur from the rest of us is the ambition and courage to seize on that opportunity. The opportunity Leila Janah recognized was enormous. Lucky for her, and the rest of us, she had the ambition to match it. Her goal? Fighting world poverty. Ever since founding Samasource in 2008, Janah has impacted the lives of more than 30,000 people, raising thousands up from the poorest parts in India, Haiti, Uganda, and more. Janah has...
Mar 08, 2017•29 min
At his very core, Matthew Kimberley is a salesman. Whether it's something he was born with, or a trait he picked up while growing up, Kimberley understands the art of the sale. Starting at the young age of 13, Kimberley took to the street as a young street performer. Juggling his way into his first few dollars, and finding within himself that perfect combination of charm, drive, and ambition that make up the best salespeople. Fast forward to his 20s, Kimberley had built himself an highly lucrati...
Mar 02, 2017•53 min
The phrase “game-changing” gets bandied about a lot in entrepreneurial circles. And certainly, in this era of landmark technological change, we are spoilt for choice when it comes to people and products that have changed the way we live. We’re about to introduce you to a woman who raises that bar to life-changing. Someone who is paving the way for millions of women to have more personalized, accurate fertility care. One who has truly moved the medical sciences needle. (Pun intended). Piraye Beim...
Feb 27, 2017•46 min
Before heading to San Fransisco to devote himself fully as the CEO of the wildly popular customer relationship management (CRM) tool Pipedrive , Timo Rein was a sales consultant back in his home country of Estonia. With a knack for making sales and closing deals, Rein found himself successfully working as one of the best salesmen in his country for over 12 years. Despite loving the industry he was in, Rein knew that there was much more he could offer the world beyond just one-on-one consultation...
Feb 22, 2017•48 min
After being unceremoniously tossed out of the corporate world 20 years ago, Michael Stelzner took a chance and turned toward entrepreneurship. In the years that followed, Stelzner began building a reputation as an influencer with a huge network of writers and marketers. It all culminated in 2009 when, after noticing more and more people talking about social media, he decided to run an experimental project: see if he could build a following by creating a blog with detailed articles about social m...
Feb 15, 2017•55 min
For the past 10 years, Scott Harrison has made charity his business, and he's managed to raise $250 million and bring clean drinking water in people in more than 24 countries since he began his nonprofit charity: water . Ever since learning the majority of diseases suffered by the poor were caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation, he has made it his life's mission to bring clean drinking water to those who need it the most. It's been an amazing journey since he first started and his organizat...
Feb 08, 2017•36 min
Many of us have been to one of those startup events where you're divided up into teams and have to whip up a company in the span of a weekend. You make great connections and have some fun, but typically the business idea you were working on for past 48 hours is gone by the time your head hits the pillow. But Matthew Arevalo and his new friend, and soon-to-be co-founder, realized they were onto something special. While most people went back to their daily lives, Arevalo began dedicating all of hi...
Feb 01, 2017•55 min
The internet marketing scene is not exactly known for being grounded and humble. It's often as bombastic and self-inflated as a hip-hop rap battle. That’s why it comes as such a surprise to find that Darren Rowse, one of the world’s most successful bloggers, is so … normal . His down-to-earth nature is only the first thing that will surprise you. The second is where he's from—Rowse isn’t from Silicon Valley, or even the United States as many assume. Rather, he hails from from Melbourne in Austra...
Jan 25, 2017•56 min
If you're interesting in learning how to market more effectively and land more sales, a quick Google search will bring up thousands of results, each one promising that their specific tip will be the one that changes your business forever. The trouble is sorting the wheat from the chaff. What's the stuff that'll actually work for you, and what's the stuff that's just clickbait? According to Sean D'Souza, the secret to marketing is actually surprisingly easy to understand. At their very core, all ...
Jan 22, 2017•45 min
There are many reasons people choose to become entrepreneurs. Some want to make money, others want the freedom of owning their own businesses, and some, like Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan , want to make an impact. For Sivaramakrishnan, a self-described accidental entrepreneur, she never intended to become the founder of one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. It just so happened to be that it was only by doing so could she affect the change she wanted to see in the world. Originally inten...
Jan 18, 2017•47 min
You can't talk about fast-growing SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies without mentioning Zapier . In about five years, they've amassed a customer base of over 1.5 million registered users, and grown their team from just three founders to 60 people. But perhaps what's most impressive and unique about Zapier, is the fact that those 60 people can be found all over the world. While Wade Foster and his co-founders reside in San Fransisco, he is quick to mention that does not mean Zapier's headquar...
Jan 11, 2017•39 min
Over the past 20 years or so, the common understanding of what an "entrepreneur" is has undergone some massive changes. It used to be that an entrepreneur was someone who wore a proper suit, courted investors over fancy lunches and dinners, and ultimately cornered entire industries. Then the term started to shift. These days when you think of an entrepreneur, you're more likely to conjure some hip whiz kid, much more likely to wear jeans and a hoodie than a suit. The attitude has changed as well...
Jan 04, 2017•46 min
Wil Schroter never set out to become an entrepreneur. In fact, he didn't have that much interest in business in the first place. But in 1995, he found himself in the office of his college guidance counselor saying that he was dropping out to start an internet company. The question she asked wasn't why Schroter was quitting college, but what was this "internet" he was talking about. A 19 years old, Schroter was one of the first handful of people in the world building successful businesses based o...
Dec 22, 2016•1 hr 1 min
After working in the children's media industry for over five years, there was something that was bothering Francesca Cavallo. She found herself asking the question: "Why does almost every princess in every classical fairy tale needs a prince to save her?" It was something she didn't particularly care for. But the reality was that there just weren't that many fairy tales where the princess was the hero, and not just the damsel-in-distress. So Cavallo did what any other entrepreneur would do in he...
Dec 15, 2016•56 min
A unique product snags attention. A boring product does not. Brad Munro says crowdfunding is most successful when you have the former—something innovative like Willi Footwear’s improved flip flops. “The kind of people that are contributing to your crowdfunding campaign, especially if they’re buying a product, they’re doing so because they can’t buy it anywhere else,” he says. “They’re not going to jump on and grab something that they can go down to the shop and get, that’s just as good or the ex...
Dec 08, 2016•34 min
Thirty years ago, Michael Gerber released a book called The E-Myth: Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About it . It carried within it lessons on what it means to be an entrepreneur, the importance of systems in building a scalable business, even the different types of people who start their own businesses. It laid out the common pitfalls that happen to most novice entrepreneurs and gave practical advice on how to avoid them. The best-selling book has since inspired millions of people...
Dec 01, 2016•1 hr 6 min
Simon Griffiths sat down for what he believed in and, it turned out, parking it on a toilet was an epic marketing win for a good cause. Griffiths and the team behind Who Gives a Crap toilet paper employed a clever stunt in which they livestreamed their co-founder sitting on a toilet until they reached their crowdfunding goal, and it worked. The company gives half of its profits to charity to increase access to toilets and sanitation in developing countries. But it takes more than a good cause an...
Nov 24, 2016•26 min
The Canary team didn’t start their company with crowdfunding. In fact, they had been working on the idea for roughly a year before turning to Indiegogo. “We decided that crowdfunding would be a great way for us to validate the market a little bit,” says Jon Troutman, co-founder of the company, which offers networked home security systems. It took the team about a month and a half to plan and prepare the campaign, but Troutman notes that they had already developed a voice for their brand and a st...
Nov 17, 2016•53 min
A team of doctors and engineers wanted a safer alternative to Q-Tips, so they created it. By understanding where potential users were coming from and staying on point with the idea that their product could alleviate those pains, the Oto-Tip gained the funding it needed to go big. The lesson from Oto-Tip is, before you start any crowdfunding campaign, you must know how your project will improve people’s lives, and you must explain it in a way that resonates emotionally with potential backers. In ...
Nov 09, 2016•31 min
