Bahcall sees Paper Showers as a natural extension of the nation’s “green” trend: as more people walk or bike to work, more people will need a fast, convenient cleaning solution. With more than one hundred thousand sold since 2011, it’s hard to argue his point. Reviews for the product tout its uniqueness -- although actually using it takes some getting used to -- and functionality. Thanks to his Paper Shower idea, Jim Bahcall is really going to clean up.
If you bike or walk to work, chances are good that you arrive at least a little sweaty. Jim Bahcall’s solution was to clean up with hand wipes; but the day came when they left him feeling wet. While he was drying off in the restroom, an idea came to him: if he packaged dry towelettes with the moist towelettes, it would make a perfect on-the-go cleaning solution. His creation, Paper Shower, is now available in places like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Nordstrom.
Bahcall sees Paper Showers as a natural extension of the nation’s “green” trend: as more people walk or bike to work, more people will need a fast, convenient cleaning solution. With more than one hundred thousand sold since 2011, it’s hard to argue his point. Reviews for the product tout its uniqueness -- although actually using it takes some getting used to -- and functionality. Thanks to his Paper Shower idea, Jim Bahcall is really going to clean up.
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Gurbaksh Chahal has always had a taste for entrepreneurship. When he was only sixteen-years-old, Chahal dropped out of high school to focus on his first company, the advertising network ClickAgents. Two years later, he sold the company for $40 million. Four years later, Gurbasksh Chahal returned to internet advertising with BlueLithium. BlueLithium focused on the performance of banner ads, and was recognized as an innovator in its field only two years after its founding. In 2007, Yahoo! bought the company for $300 million. This time, after Chahal’s noncompete contract expired, he launched RadiumOne, an internet advertising company that incorporates social data to better tailor its ads using what it calls its Dynamic Audience Platform.
An extension of the Dynamic Audience Platform is RadiumOne’s Via.me iPhone app. With it, users can publish content across any and all of their social networks. Thanks to a simple, easy-to-use interface and integration with all of the major social networks, Via.me not only works, it is a solid choice that’s sure to catch on. Which is particularly beneficial for the brands and businesses using RadiumOne’s services. Not only does it give them valuable first-party information to better gauge the success of their marketing endeavors, but it also creates new audiences brands would otherwise be unable to reach. Best of all, the data collected is all real-time, allowing businesses to react or target potential customers instantly. Gurbaksh Chahal believes that you don’t need to have a brand-new idea to create a profitiable, innovative business, and his past experiences have certainly proved that correct. But where he finds his success is in the little things; RadiumOne’s work may seem remarkably similar to the work done by the Chahal-helmed Click Agents, and BlueLithium; it’s in the way the service integrates social media that sets it apart. David Jorgensen’s career in technology-focused entrepreneurship spans four decades. His corporate experience extends to engineering positions held with The Boeing Company and Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in the 1960s. After establishing his first successful venture, Computer Synectics, in 1969, he made a significant impact in Silicon Valley, helping propel Dataquest Inc. into top-tier status as a provider of high-tech market research. David Jorgensen stayed with the firm after its successful sale to The Nielsen Company in 1978, taking the role of Chairman and CEO in 1981.
Mr. Jorgensen simultaneously engaged in building Katun Corporation into a global leader in the office equipment, photoreceptor, and imaging parts distribution industry. He co-founded the Bloomington, Minnesota, firm in 1979, positioning it in a market space inhabited by small companies. He and his partner grew Katun from the ground up, building a reputation as a low-cost international supplier of OEM-quality products. Initially intending to sell the firm when it reached $10 million in value, David Jorgensen and Katun remained together through the 1980s and 1990s. He notably expanded the company beyond the United States to include distribution locations in Europe and Asia, as well as dedicated research and training facilities. In 2000, Mr. Jorgensen accepted responsibilities as Chairman of Katun and, at the time of its corporate acquisition in 2002, the firm enjoyed sales of $350 million. Today David Jorgensen is involved in philanthropic endeavors as President of the David & Annette Jorgensen Foundation. Ben Silbermann has always loved collecting things. As a boy he collected stamps, and loved to show them off. So his booming social-media company, Pinterest, represents a natural evolution for him. The concept of Pinterest is simple: people make lists and populate those lists with images they find apropos or inspirational. Posts and lists can be shared or commented on by users. A whole community has built around the site, despite its possibly illegal treatment of copyright.
Overall, Silbermann wants to help people make something beautiful with Pinterest. He has plans to expand it beyond the website, with an iPad app on the way; and he wants to engage others to design with the Pinterest platform. The eye for design permeates Pinterest, much of which was due to Silbermann’s direction. A former ad designer for Google, Ben Silbermann, learned how to think big at the tech giant, and applied his experience when designing Pinterest. As the online community, and Pinterest’s reach, expands, there’s no telling just how successful Silbermann will be. Based in Miami for over a decade, Steven Pinkert serves as Managing Partner with Pinkert and Marsh, PA. The boutique practice offers legal services in areas such as commercial litigation, patents and trademarks, administrative law, and bar admissions and grievances. Mr. Pinkert also has transactional law experience, assisting companies in developing Chinese market entry strategies and in optimizing import and export functions throughout South America and Asia.
During the first 15 years of his career, Mr. Pinkert engaged in the field of psychiatric medicine. Earning his Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Pre-Med from the University of Southern California, he next pursued medical studies at Chicago’s Northwestern University Medical School. From 1979 to 1994, he maintained a private psychiatric practice in Chicago, focusing on patients with severe mental health issues such as antisocial personality disorder and schizophrenia. Steven Pinkert also held responsibilities as Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He consulted with Substance Abuse Services, Inc. for several years, undertaking evaluations of patients with substance addictions and formulating treatment programs in coordination with staff members. Earning his Juris Doctor from the University of Miami School of Law in 1998, Mr. Pinkert graduated with an MBA in International Business at the same university in 2001. He currently employs these diverse qualifications in assisting firms seeking to expand their large-scale medical equipment manufacturing, distribution, and purchasing capacities in China. As Chairman of the Board of Signum US Healthcare Inc., Steven Pinkert also promotes the creation of radiotherapy centers through a joint-venture relationship with Chinese state-owned hospitals. For people living in very poor areas of the world, work that provides a living wage and that doesn’t require laboring in a degrading environment is hard to come by. But a company based in San Francisco, California is trying to change that. Samasource, a nonprofit organization founded in 2008 by Leila Chirayath Janah, helps people in six countries across the world -- from Haiti to Pakistan.
Janah’s work with the underprivileged people of the world began when she was sixteen and teaching English to sixty blind people in Ghana. They were thirsty for the connectedness that English could bring them, and eager to learn. During her time at Harvard University, Janah worked for the World Bank, which gave her the experience she needed to put her ideas into motion. Targeting mostly women and youths from eighteen- to thirty-years-old, Samasource breaks larger projects down into individual segments called “microwork.” Each worker is given a task -- usually data entry, content moderation, and other outsourcing services -- to complete and submit to Samasource’s proprietary cloud-based work distribution system. The work is checked and then sent along to enterprise customers. In that way Samasource provides opportunities to people would would not have them otherwise. As part of Samasource’s agreements, the workers are paid a living wage and have a chance not only to advance globally but within Samasource itself. For workers like the ones in refugee camps in Kenya, the work gives them something that tireless working in the fields -- work that is difficult to come by -- does not: a way out. In the increasingly globalized world, the experience is invaluable. With more than two thousand employees worldwide, Samasource has had some success advancing its goal of providing good work to people in need. Thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the tech giant Google, Samasource will be able to impact people’s lives in an even more meaningful way. Sometimes a great business idea just presents itself. That’s how it worked for Tiny Prints founder Laura Ching, a Stanford Business School graduate, as she went through the time-consuming process of ordering her wedding invitations; after a multi-step process that involved handwritten annotations and back-and-forth faxes, she decided she had enough.
Today, nearly eight years after she co-founded Tiny Prints with Kelly Berger and fellow Stanford alum Ed Han, Ching is still helping others design their invitations, greeting cards, and business correspondence in a simple, attractive way. The company now boasts work from fifty designers and celebrity clients like Gwen Stefani. As Chief Merchandising Officer, Ching is responsible for promoting Tiny Prints to the world at large. With a booming customer base and celebrity-designed cards benefiting foundations like the Epidermolysis Bullosa Medical Research Foundation, Laura Ching continues to push Tiny Prints to the next level. Charlie Ditkoff has held a position as Vice Chairman of Global Corporate and Investment Banking with Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) for nearly a decade. His background in corporate law and finance has made him uniquely suited for directing the firm’s healthcare coverage service offerings.
Earning his undergraduate political science degree cum laude from Brown University, Mr. Ditkoff attended Yale Law School from 1983 to 1986. He subsequently joined the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, focusing on corporate securities issues. Transitioning to the financial sector, Charlie Ditkoff joined Credit Suisse First Boston as Vice President in 1992. After two years in this capacity, he accepted a role within Morgan Stanley’s Corporate Finance Group. In 1999, he took a position as Managing Director of Bank of America’s Corporate and Investment Banking division. For the next four years he managed Banc of America Securities, LLC’s coverage of healthcare industry services distributors and providers. Accepting his current position in 2003, he spearheaded the corporate division’s market expansion through focused strategies in M&A and financings. Today, Mr. Ditkoff is recognized within the Wall Street community as a top banker engaged in healthcare services coverage. A sports enthusiast, Charlie Ditkoff supports several New York-area franchises, including the Rangers, Jets, Yankees, and Knicks. Residing in Westchester, he enjoys tennis and golf in his free time. He is also a music enthusiast, with a particular affinity for the rural Appalachian sounds of bluegrass music and rock bands such as Wilco and the Grateful Dead. The vacuum cleaner. A staple of modern homemaking since its invention in 1860, the modern vacuum is often stuffed with gears and shielded with thick plastic or metal. James Dyson saw something wrong their engineering and decided to change it. He invented the first Dyson vacuum cleaner in 1978 after noticing that the store bought one quickly clogged with dust and dirt. Dyson spent years developing prototypes and refining his design. He founded Dyson Ltd in 1992 to produce vacuum cleaners and other household products like heaters and hand dryers.
What makes a Dyson vacuum cleaner different? The simplest answer is that they do not use bags. In fact, when Dyson tried to sell his vacuum cleaner to established companies, none of them were interested in abandoning their bagged designs. But more than that, Dyson’s vision for the cleaners is studiously engineered, removing the extra parts and needlessly thick materials in favor of thin, light materials designed to last for a long time. Thanks to that engineering, Dyson vacuums are truly energy efficient. Dyson himself knows that the greatest innovations occur when inventors address a problem, rather than simply make largely superficial changes. To that end, he founded the James Dyson Foundation in 2002 to encourage design and engineering education -- elements he believes are integral for world improvement. Dyson also created the James Dyson Award to reward the most creative and inventive students in the world for design and engineering excellence. Entrants are prompted only to “design something that solves a problem.” Today, James Dyson is worth about £1.45 billion. In addition to his inventing work, Dyson was knighted in 2006 -- despite frustrations in the United Kingdom from a decision to move his the bulk of his factories to Malaysia and China. Now sixty-four-years-old, Dyson has not lost the passion of creating something new and better that drew him into entrepreneurship all those years ago. |