Starting your own business isn’t an easy feat; now more than ever, start-ups face several hurdles, including access to funding and investor sponsorship. Very few start-ups achieve success, so what’s the secret to turning a bright idea into a successful startup?
Let’s explore the journeys of a few inspiring entrepreneurs as they reveal how their companies came to life and the hard-won wisdom they gathered along the way.
Business As a Force for Good
As chief executive officer and co-founder of Nextail, Joaquin Villalba wanted to create a business that did good for society. Armed with a strong background in fashion, she identified an opportunity to advance the fashion industry. She founded Nextail, a smart retail platform that empowers merchandisers. The company aims to help retailers become more agile, enabling them to use fewer resources while maintaining the same or better product availability. Villalba assembled a team of like-minded professionals passionate about data and technology to make a positive impact on the world.
Promote Collaboration
Paul Gunther, co-founder of Proglove, was inspired to create his product upon touring BMW’s central plant. During the tour, he noticed that barcode scanning happened literally one million times a day, and that almost everybody wore gloves when working. That inspired him to create a glove that connects with a barcode scanner; hence Proglove was born. The wearable barcode scanner saves up to 4 seconds per scan, reducing the company’s time, energy, and costs by $4 million per day. The barcode scanner idea works everywhere where barcode scanning is a factor.
Harness Technology
MakinaRocks was founded on the premise of capitalizing on artificial intelligence. Upon collaborating with individuals in the manufacturing sector and IT, chief executive officer and cofounder Andre Yoon saw the potential of AI and the implications it had on the manufacturing industry and started MakinaRocks with the goal of transforming the industrial sector. By combining AI with their machine learning platform, the founder and cofounder hope to further advance the industry, making technology more intelligent and developing enhanced software platforms for the manufacturing, automotive, defense, and heavy industries.
Test Assumptions
Audrey Cheng wanted to establish a school that would graduate ready to hire talented students. This was born out of her own experience after being a frustrated recipient of the traditional education system for more than 15 years. Moringa School provides high-intensity project-based learning for students in Africa, equipping them with valuable training in software engineering, data science, cybersecurity, and UI/UX design. One of the key lessons Audrey Cheng took away from establishing Moringa school was that it is critical to test your assumptions consistently, after all, knowledge, she says, is evolving and never fully set in stone.
Focus on Value
Amos Haggiag, chief executive officer and co-founder of Optibus, had a robust background in public transit; his father was the CFO of a mass transit company. His father challenged him to use his skills in technology, computers, and math to solve fundamental problems, such as how many buses and drivers to allocate. Haggiag pondered the idea and met his co-founder, Eitan Yanovsky, at university; together, they developed a working prototype and sold it to major transportation operators. Currently, Optibus helps transit agencies and operators create efficient routes and manage vehicle and driver schedules to improve passenger reliability. Haggiag says the biggest lesson he took away from founding Optibus is that you have to ignore much of the noise from your competitors and focus on developing your product and delivering genuine value to the people who will use it.
David Messiha | Staff Writer
