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Adam Neumann : The CEO & Co-founder of WeWork

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Startups have become a trend these days. Every day we hear about several new innovative ideas, which are brought up in the market, with a pure desire to succeed. The masterminds see the industry as an empty canvas, on which, they want to paint with their own colours. They don’t want to work under some other person’s rules, but they aspire to make their own set of rules.

If you are also a startup genius, there are always 3 questions roaming around in your head. First, ‘Where to get the funding from?’, second, ‘Where to get the workforce from?’ and third, ‘If I get the workforce, from where to start working?’ Alongside, you also need the information and the contacts to get in the community of independent business. Well, the first question depends on your hard work, but when it comes to the second and the third questions, WeWork will get the job done, because Adam Neumann, the co-founder of the company, does everything to provide you with the best of everything.

Adam neumann
Image Source: Forbes

Adam Neumann, the CEO and co-founder of WeWork, was born in Israel, in 1979. He was seven when his parents’ relationship came to an end, and they got divorced. His mother specialised in medical science and moved to the U.S., in 1986. Adam and his sister Adi also moved with her to the United States. After 4 years, the family shifted back to Israel and settled in Kibbutz Nir Am. Adam joined the Israel Navy and served as an officer, for 5 years. As his sister was pursuing a career in modelling, in New York City, she became the reason for him to move to the city after his service in the Israel Navy.

He then graduated from Brauch College, New York. He met Miguel Mckelvy through a mutual friend, and that’s when things took a turn. They both had many similar thoughts about connecting companies to each other and to build a community.

In 2008, they both co-founded Greendesk, in Brooklyn. Greendesk still continues to operate and provides eco-friendly office spaces for any business need, no matter if you are a team or an individual. After Greendesk, Adam switched and started to run a business, which made baby overalls. In 2010, both Adam and Miguel came up with another idea, ‘WeWork’.

When asked about the basic need and the idea of WeWork, Adam said “The truth behind WeWork is that we never saw co-working spaces. I owned a baby clothing business, and there was an empty building. I talked to Miguel. We talked about different things we could do to make that building better. And when we actually got to talking about it, I said that this is my third business, it’s a very difficult thing to start a new business, and if we could create an environment, where entrepreneurs and small businesses can come in, have a space, share services, and help each other to be more successful, then it would be a great product.”

First network lab that WeWork set up was SoHo, New York, in 2011. Soon, the company grew. As of now, it has more than 10 million sq. ft of real estate! It has drawn some big money investments from ‘Goldman Sachs’ and ‘Softbank’. WeWork has more than 5000 employees. Working at WeWork means that you’ll get to play an arcade room and enjoy the free beer!

The company has established its offices in more than 77 cities, in 23 countries, like India, Germany, France, Spain, UK. It has helped more than 20,000 companies, including big names, like Microsoft, Spotify, Facebook, Starbucks, Pinterest etc. It has also given a push-start to startups like Meetup, Consumer, Hack Hands etc.

In January 2019, WeWork was rebranded as The We Company. The corporation is giving a tough competition to real-time Real Estate. It is the biggest property holder in Manhattan (5.3 million sq. ft). Neumann himself has a worth of $4.1 billion (Reported by Forbes) with his company valued at more than $20 billion.

Adam Neumann and his company exhibit the value, a community can hold. It gives a vivid message that a team is better than you standing alone. When problems are tackled by teams, it brings a sense of unity and a better understanding. By being in the community, you are surrounded by geniuses and masterminds, very much available to lend you help whenever you need. Adam, clearly brought a more than needed product into the market to make your offices a better place and ‘you’ a part of the community in easy ways.

Scott Heiferman : Founder of Meetup, A Platform Connecting People in the Real World

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Losing your mother at a young age might be a difficult situation, but when you have five elder siblings to hold on to, you can stay strong when the phase passes. Scott Heiferman considers his five siblings as his five parents other than his father, who guided him well when it came to his life as well as career choices. Even when he decided to work at a McDonald’s restaurant, there was no pressure on him. But the wake of September 11, attracted his attention to a crucial topic, which made him found Meetup.com.

Early Life

Heiferman is the youngest of his four siblings, born in Homewood, Illinois, in 1972. He was still a child when he grew an interest in technology and business. He started his first business when he was just 9, the “Scott’s Slave Service”, which of course was for his family members only, in return he received food and shelter for him. He went to the Flossmoor High School in Homewood and started learning programming languages on his Apple II. He even created a Commodore VIC-20 graphics program. In his teens, he started another business and sold coupon books to earn extra money. The money he earned from his coupon books business, was sufficient to pay for the fees for the first year of his college.

Scott Heiferman
Image Source: medium.com

He joined the University of Iowa, where he first took engineering as majors. But later, he changed his mind and took business studies. During college, he worked as the host of a weekly radio show named Advertorial Infotainment, at the college radio. The show became the first radio program on the internet. Being brought up among people from different fields helped him experimenting with his career choices.

Career

After graduating from college, Heiferman started working at Sony, as Interactive Marketing Frontiersman. After working for one year from 1994 to 1995, he flew to New York. In New York, he started an online ad-agency, named as i-traffic. Soon the company earned lots of profits and grew to 100 employees. The success of the company attracted the interest of Agency.com in it, that, in 1999, acquired i-traffic for $15 million. Heiferman continued working for Agency.com but left just in a year.

He was tired of meeting people from the corporate world, so to take a break from the same and to get in touch with the real world again, he started working at one of the McDonald’s restaurants.

Founding Meetup

At the time he worked in McDonald’s, Heiferman lived near the Twin Towers in New York. The attack of 9/11 made him connect with his neighbours for the very first time. A few days after the attacks, he started reading ‘Bowling Alone’, a book based on interacting with strangers and building trust.

At the same time, being a music lover, he used to go to different music concerts. He even attended the Luna concerts, 20 times, as it was his favourite band. In the beginning, his friends went with him, but later, he started going alone to the concerts. At the concerts, he started noticing people who were coming to the same concerts with him. The meetups with his neighbours and the meeting with the strangers at the concerts led him to think of creating a platform upon which people could meete other people who shared the same interest as them.

Soon in 2002, Heiferman founded Meetup along with five other co-founders. He started the company with a total of 10 employees. At the same time, he also founded another startup named Fotolog. Only in two years, Meetup reached one million users. In 2003, Barak Obama, who was a candidate for the U.S. Senate at that time, had promised to attend any meetup having a hundred supporters. For that Democrat, Howard Dean organised a campaign over Meetup.com and for his surprise more than hundred people had gathered through the website.

In 2005, Heiferman started imposing a fee for running Meetup groups. It was 2009, when the company made its first huge profit, having 32 million members in 182 countries. In 2017, Meetup was acquired by WeWork, Scott Heiferman remaining the CEO of the company, till in 2018, when he stepped down from the post to retain the office of Chairman of the company.

Personal Life

On 13 September 2008, Heiferman got married to Emily Krasnor an officer of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. The couple has two children together.

In 2013, Heiferman was named “Innovator of the Year Under 35” by MIT Technology Review. The book ‘Bowling Alone’ was the game changer for him, and still, the copy of the book is presented to every employee at their joining in the company.

Eric S. Yuan : CEO & Founder of Zoom Video Communications, ‘A Service That Connects People’

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In this fast running world where problems require an instant solution, face to face interactions are hard to get. At this time, people require a connection, which they can use, to interact with each other, without covering the actual distances between them. Also, many video calling apps in the software market doesn’t allow to connect more than 4 or 6 people at the same time. Eric S. Yuan also had faced the same problem, but instead of resenting over it, he stepped up and worked hard to give this industry ‘Zoom’.

Since his college days, Yuan had dreamt about building a communication platform that covered the distances between the people without even travelling. That’s when Zoom’s idea popped up in Yuan’s mind while he was still in his freshman year of college. And, in 2011, he founded Zoom. Zoom is a company that provides remote conferencing services using cloud computing. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, United States and the software it brings, gives you the advantage of the combined video conferencing, online meetings chats and mobile collaborations.

Eric S Yuan
Image Source: bmmagazine.co

While in college, Eric’s girlfriend (now wife) lived at a place quite distant from his place. Whenever he wanted to meet her, he used to take excruciating 10-hour train rides. He wished that he could build a solution to this problem through which his girlfriend and he could stay connected, even without being together, physically. He wanted that he could visit her anytime without any travelling.

Eric always said that it was his dream to come to the United States and achieve something big due to his interest, he had grown in the new technology ‘Internet’ that was blooming at that time. At the time, when he applied for the Visa for the US, he got his application rejected a few times. He continuously applied for nine times over the course of 2 years. And after his ninth try, he was finally granted one.

“When I came to America, I did not even speak English, but I knew that I could write codes. I knew I had to work very hard, and so did I. Also, I’m very paranoid so I say to myself, I have to work harder’. Working hard, that is the only thing I know better than my competitor”, says Eric recalling his old days and his mantra of success.

In 1997, Eric came to the Silicon Valley and joined WebEx. WebEx was real time, and it had only a dozen employees. After Yuan’s joining, the company grew very quickly and went public in no time. In 2007, WebEx was sold to Cisco. He was appointed as the Vice President of Cisco and the in-charge of collaborations software.

At Cisco, he did consumer interactions directly with consumers. He found out that many of the consumers were not happy either with Cisco or WebEx. Eric knew that this was the time to do something big that he always dreamt of, something during his college times. He left Cisco and alongside geared up a team of 40 engineers, and came up with ‘Zoom’ in 2011.

After the release, Zoom frew to about a thousand users, and the numbers kept on growing with every update release. As of now, Zoom can process 1000 participants in a single video conferencing call. After being in the market for 5-6 years, it registered more than 20 Billion annualized meeting minutes.

Eric believes that keeping customers happy is something which runs a company. If the customers are not happy, the company will be long gone. Zoom was ranked 18 in the Forbes Cloud 100. Also, Eric was ranked number 1 in the top CEO by Glassdoor based on approval ratings from the employee reviews. Eric got an astonishing 99% approval showing that how he keeps his employees happy too.

He wishes that he could open his company a lot before, but he is still happy with his success. He thrives to do hard work. When asked upon start-ups, he said, “The journey is long and tough, but one must not be afraid to start. One should be vulnerable to taking risks. Also, find investors who want to invest in you, not only in your business”.

Eric S. Yuan, the CEO and Founder of Zoom Video Communications, has a story that motivates and says out loud that hardships are inevitable and without them, no one can reach the success they desire. Eric is an inspiring leader, leading his team to the best to provide the best.

Frank Wang : The Man Behind the Flight of Unmanned Drones

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Even the thought of flying gives us a sense of freedom. Flying means that we can see the world from another perspective, an open one, a wide one. But we cannot fly! Technology has been coping with everything we cannot do. The places where we lack, we take the help of technology to reach that potential. And so is the technology that DJI brings to you, to see the world from a perspective so different, the perspective of flying! And, the man behind the scenes of DJI, ‘Frank Wang’ shares a story so motivating.

SZ Da-Jiang Innovation, also known as DJI, is a drone manufacturing company. DJI manufactures unmanned, autonomous aerial vehicles, flight controllers, and the list goes on and on. At present, DJI is the largest drone-manufacturing company in the market, standing on top of the competition of drone companies.

Frank Wang
Image Source: Forbes

Frank Wang was born in 1980 as Wang Tao, in Hangzhou, China. His father was a small business owner and an engineer. During his childhood, Frank developed an interest in flying objects. He literally craved flying helicopters, and always begged his parents to buy him one. At 16, he finally received one, but the joy was short-lived because he crashed it in no time. He spent most of his youth reading about model aeroplanes and helicopters. His childhood dream was to build a flying robot that had a camera on it, and it could follow him anywhere he went. Over time, his interest in planes and helicopters kept growing.

Even having poor academic results, he was a genius when it came to helicopters and planes. He always intended to build a career in the flying field. But this setback of results landed him into East China Normal University, Shanghai, as top universities were out of range for him. In the university, he studied psychology. Further, he joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

It was the Hong Kong University, where his life took a turn, and things got interesting. During his senior year, he designed a ‘helicopter-flight control system’, which was the part of a college project. He was granted HK$18000 (US$2300) by the university, to conduct research and develop a ‘drone helicopter’. He built a helicopter with the help of one of his professors. For that, he skipped classes, worked and studied day in day out and without even having a good sleep! He knew the importance of his project and worked so hard that he managed to make an unmanned helicopter. Wang’s hard work paid off, and the drone made its first flight by nearly reaching the top of the Mount Everest.

In 2006, Wang started DJI from his dorm room, which today, stands as the largest drone company all over the world, with it owing almost 70% of all the drones industry. In 2017, he became Asia’s youngest tech billionaire. According to a report from Forbes, in 2018, his worth stood a huge amount of US $5.4 billion. Frank holds 40% of the shares of DJI.
DJI reportedly had more than US$2 billion as sales, and during the valuation of the company, in 2018, it came out that the company raised more than US$15 billion. The headquarter of the company is located in Shenzhen, China and has its operating divisions in China, Hong Kong, Japan, North America and Europe. The company which started with an employee count of 4 has now more than 4000 employees in different countries.

DJI is famous for its UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) and to be more precise, the ‘Phantom’ series. It manufactures devices like Camcorder, Camera stabilizers, flight platform gimbals, flight controls, etc.

The CEO and founder of SZ Da-Jiang Innovation (DJI), Frank Wang gives us the motivation that if we have the will, if we have the passion and the desire to work hard, we can achieve the dreams, even the ones that we saw as a child. Frank, achieved what he dreamt as a kid and puts an example in front of the whole world of what ‘true passion and hard work’ can do.

The Boeing Company: 100 Years of Aviation Pioneering

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The Boeing Company is one of the biggest names in the pioneering of aero products. The company derived its name from the surname of its founder William Edward Boeing, who was an American timber businessman. The company has an old history, as it was founded almost 102 years ago, on 15 July 1916, in Seattle, Washington, U.S. The founder and the former CEO of the company, William Boeing, had an immense interest in the aircrafts, which he developed when he first time saw a manned flying machine during the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, in Seattle, in 1909.

After the incident, Boeing himself joined the Glenn L. Martin Flying School in Los Angeles to learn flying. He even purchased a plane for himself from Martin’s. The idea of manufacturing his first plane hit his mind when he was unable to get the replacement for the damaged parts of his newly purchased aircraft from Martin’s. Hence with the help of his friend Cdr. George Conrad Westervelt, he built an amphibian biplane, the B & W Seaplane.

In 1910, William Boeing bought Heath’s shipyard in Seattle, where he founded The Boeing Company, his first aeroplane factory, on July 15, 1916, with the name Pacific Aero Products Co. Before founding the company, William owned business of timber. So his experience with the wood helped him a lot in the Airplane manufacturing business.

boeing
Image Source: almasdarnews.com

On 9 May 1917, the company was rebranded as Boeing Airplane Company. In the same year, it shipped its first 50 aeroplanes built for the US Navy for the first world war and moved its operations to its Boeing Plant1 located in the Washington state.

In 1919, the company manufactured the Boeing B-1 flying boat, which could carry two more passengers along with the pilot. The aircraft served as the international airmail from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia, for eight long years. By the time, Boeing started manufacturing fighter planes for the U.S. Army Air Service. The early models of its fighter planes were PW-9 fighter and the Boeing P-12/F4B fighter.

Soon, Boeing’s Model 40 mail plane started operating between San Francisco and Chicago for the U.S. government, under the U.S. Post Office’s contract. In 1927, the company launched an airline named Boeing Air Transport and manufactured its first passenger plane Boeing 80 that took its first flight on 27 July 1928. The same year, the company went through a merger with the Pacific Air Transport.

In the early 30’s Boeing emerged as a leader in the all-metal aircraft construction and built a low-wing monoplane, named as Monomail, to carry mails. The Mononmail also became the basis of the Boeing YB-9 architecture. In 1932, the company brought the first all-metal monoplane fighter, Model 248, and in the next year Model 247, a standard passenger plane.

In 1938, the company built the largest passengers airliner, the Boeing 314 Clipper, to fly on transoceanic routes, under an agreement with Pan American World Airways. The plane had a capacity of 90 passengers in the day flight and of 40 passengers in the night flight. It took its first flight in June 1938 and started operating for regular passenger service from the U.S. to the U.K.

During the world II, Boeing won a contract to build the fighter planes for the U.S. Air Force. Almost all of the aircraft manufacturing companies cooperated at building them. They hired the family members of the soldiers who had gone to the war and built a large number of B-17 and B-29 bombers. The production had gone to a level that almost 350 planes were made in every month.

In 1947, Boeing built its first jet aircraft XB-47 followed by the successful launching of B-47 and B-52 bombers. It also started building the military jets, including the B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress, in the decade of 50s. Soon Boeing entered into the manufacturing of the intercontinental missile, using the short-range missile technology.

In the mid-50s, the company started the manufacturing of the small turbine engines and became a leader in the same. Boeing built 2,461 engines before production ceased in April 1968.

The decade of the 50s and 60s were the decades of manufacturing jetliners for Boeing. It launched the 707, 720 as well as 727 commercial jetliners in those years. The 727 was the first commercial jetliner to reach 1,000 sales. Boeing’s twin-engine 737, become the best-selling commercial jet aircraft of all times.

In the 70s, the company faced a simultaneous decline and recession in the market. But by the mid of the 80s, the economic condition of the company started to improve, and it introduced new passenger airliners, the single-aisle 757, the larger, twin-aisle 767, and upgraded versions of the 737, with larger seating capacity.

Having been a part of the Apollo project, it also participated in other space programs and became the first contractor for the International Space Station program. In 1994, Boeing came up with the most modern, i.e., typical three-class layout aircraft, the twin-engine 777, with a seating capacity of 300-370 passengers.

In early 2000, the company purchased Hughes Electronics, in order to expand into the aerospace field. Boeing became the largest provider of rocket launch services to the U.S. government, through its joint venture, United Launch Alliance, with Lockheed Martin, in late 2006. Boeing also became the prime contractors in the U.S. military’s Future Combat Systems program.

Boeing revealed its Q4 profit of the year 2013 in January 2014, that was estimated to be about US$1.23 billion. In 2017, the company had 140,800 and made a revenue of US$93,392 million.

Mona Ataya : The Woman Who Revamped a Mother’s World And her Babies

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What is the toughest job on the planet? If you ask me, I would say a mother’s job is the toughest that stands today. Bringing up a human with qualities and personality is certainly difficult. Besides, every mother in the world wants the best for her little devil, be it outfits, education or anything else.

Shopping for kids is enervating these days. Considering the prices and the choices in the market, it is very difficult to pick out the best, for your little one. One has to look for the quality, the pricing and the service that is being provided to them. Well, put these three together, and you’ve got Mumzworld.

Mumzworld is an online site for baby shopping. Yes! A whole internet site that caters only baby needs. And the mastermind behind this, Mona Ataya, shares an inspiring story out with the world.

Mona Ataya
Image Source: arabianbusiness.com

Mona, the CEO and founder of Mumzworld, launched the startup site after taking into account the daily troubles and needs of mothers, that were being ignored by the market. She stepped up and launched the site, which is now the 1st and the largest online shopping site in the Middle East for mothers and their babies.

Mumzworld services in countries like UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon, and ships their products all over the world. Mumzworld has got everything related to babies and children. From diapers to clothes, feeding to toys, bathing needs to books and what not! It has also got a wide range of more than 1600 brands with big names such as Lego, Pampers, Fischer Price and Johnson&Johnson. Mumzworld promises the best price guarantee, free speedy delivery, easy returns and flexible payment options.

“A baby is the light of a mother’s eyes, and we at Mumzworld understand that every mum wants the best for her precious angel. In a remarkable breakthrough in online baby shopping, we present before you the most extensive range of baby and kids products that you could find in one place,” says the official site.

Mona started her career at Procter and Gamble (P&G) in the USA. Working there, she was involved in the soap sector. Then, after some time, she moved back to the Middle East and joined Johnson&Johnson. During her work period at Johnson’s, she launched many brands like Greiter Skin Care, ph5.5, Clean and Clear, and also, Johnson’s Suncare. She also relaunched some of the brands like Suncare and Piz Buin in Europe. In 2000, she left Johnson&Johnson and teamed up with her brother Rabea Ataya and co-founded Bayt (bayt.com), which today, is the leading job site in the Middle East and provides services all over the world to help people find the perfect jobs for them.

After becoming a mother to three boys, she turned to a full-time mother job. But this period brought difficulties for her. Soon, she began to discover gaps in the market, which could not satisfy the needs of a mother for her baby. But she wanted to tear down this inconvenience. So, in 2011 she came up with her 2nd startup, Mumzworld. She wanted to revolutionize the way mothers shop for their babies. Mumzworld had every indispensable for the need of a mother, which was also cost-effective. Since then, the site has been growing at a rapid pace. The site won many awards like ‘Small Business of The Year (2013)’, ‘Most Admired Online Retailer (2014)’, and ‘Customer Service Excellence Award’.

Mona, too, won many awards. She was listed in the ‘100 Most Powerful Arab Women’ in 2014 and 2015. She also got mentioned in ‘100 Most Powerful Arabs, next generation’.

“Endeavors have been fantastic. It has allowed us to meet and get support from super-super smart minds” quoted Mona, when enquired about the network of startups and businesses. She tips for new entrepreneurs, that in business world one has to keep on going and fundamentally believe their vision and what they are trying to achieve. ‘Being an entrepreneur is more of a mindset’ she says.

Mona says that her vision was and is to create a necessary online extension to a mother’s world. Mumzworld also keeps on enrolling itself into social initiatives, like giving out free meal vouchers and providing impoverished mothers with baby essentials.

She shares her daily routine as a typical work mom. Starting from taking her kids to school, then working in her office until her kids get free from school, and then ending it by putting all her kids to sleep by herself. She refers that the hardest job is of a full-time mother, and also that this fact cannot be denied. When asked about her inspiration, she said that her challenges were her inspirations alongside her children. Her challenges gave her the ultimate idea for success.

So, the CEO and founder of Mumzworld, Mona Ataya clearly gives us the light that even the hardships and challenges in our day-to-day life can leave life-changing impressions on us which leads our pathway to success. Mona undoubtedly is a role model and a great mentor to be followed.