Notes on Examples of Successful Entrepreneurial start-ups

Nike — Bill Bowerman and Phil Night founded Nike, originally received shoes from Onitsuka Tiger and sold them as a retailer. Even modifying the shoes for them, with athletic experience. Started to manufacture their own. Signing rookie athletes.

Gymshark — Founded by Ben Francis. Software background from developing and coding. Developed Gymshark whilst at university and a pizza hut delivery driver. Started with dropshipping. Started from humble beginnings. 2 months until the first sale. Starting with no money. Bootstrapping.

Front end customers are first-time customers who are usually low profit margin because of cost per acquisition. Backend customers are more profitable as they are repeat customers.

Gym sharks started designing his own products.

Influencer marketing — send it to influencers for free and they advertise on their social media. First mover advantages as they were first to do it. Now it is saturated.

Robert Klark Graham — Started developing a sperm bank with donations only from Nobel Prize winners, geniuses and gifted athletes in an attempt to create a better human gene pool. However, his ideas was compared to Nazi eugenics programs and his sperm bank was closed down.

Omidyar — Computer programmer who was auctioning stuff on his personal website began charging people fees and developed eBay.

Matt Maloney and Mike Evans were tired of calling restaurants for takeout food for dinner they built GrubHub, a one-stop shop for food delivery.

From Rags to Riches

Take control — John Paul DeJoria — American entrepreneur — abandoned by his wife and homeless — Built hair care products and styling tools with Paul Mitchell

Founder of Alibaba — Jack Ma — six people sharing $7 dollars a month — be resourceful

Envision a greater future — Oprah Winfrey — Grew up on a farm — things could be different.

Own your life — Chris Gardener — You can’t change something until you own it. He built the brokerage firm Gardener Rich and Co.