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Dom Hofmann : The Founder of Vine “A 6 Second Entertainment App”

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In this era, where everything is becoming instant and fast, everyone wishes that their entertainment also becomes very instant, quick. Besides, these days, in the hectic schedules, who has the time to take out an hour to watch a TV show or a live comedy show to please themselves. People wish that their source of comedy becomes shorter and shorten in the time perspective and holds enough interest that cam amuses them. Such was the vision of Dom Hoffman when he built the app Vine which turned out to be a wide success all over the world and gained a fan base very much faster than ordinary start-up apps.

So, “What makes Vine so special?” you may ask. The standout in this app was that it made short videos. And by short, I mean, indeed very short! It produced not more than 6-second videos. This was something ‘new’ to the entertainment industry, which shook it! People went nuts over Vine because it brought a sense of an innovational challenge to make fun and creative videos in a time period of just 6 seconds.

Dom, born on 27th September 1986, is what we can say a creative entrepreneur. He created ‘Vine’ with his partners, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll. He feels, Vine becoming the internet’s most chosen video making tool, was rather an ‘accident’. He said that they imagined the tool would help people capture small moments of their lives Dom Hofmannand share them with their friends.

Vine was founded in June of 2012 and before even the official launch, Twitter bought it 30 Million $. The microblogging site, Twitter, thought of it as the perfect combination to its ‘short’ text way of socializing. The videos made by tool were published through the Vine’s social network and could be shared on other social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Vine is short of Vignette which is defined as a short impressionistic scene.

The tool was launched on 24th January 2013. In this, the videos could be surfed in accordance with theme, trending etc. It gave a tough competition to Instagram and Mobli.

“It became pretty clear as soon we launched it”, said Hofmann as the app gained a huge user base in just the span of less than 2 years. By December 2015, the tool had already surpassed 200 million active users. He (Dom), was surprised and excited about the way that people were using the app in strange ways. “Watching the community and the tool push on each other was exciting and unreal, and almost immediately it became clear that Vine’s culture was going to shift towards creativity and experimentation,” he said. Vine’s symbol displays an inverted 6 if you look at it closely.

But it eventually came to an end, when Twitter announced that it would be shutting down the Vine app on October 27, 2016. But Twitter said that viewing and downloading vines would continue. On January 20, 2017, Twitter launched an archive which contained all the previously captured vines.

Some of the reasons listed by the Vine community for the shutting down of Vine services were that Twitter’s own uncertain future in social networking and also the increasing competition from Snapchat which rolled out 10 seconds clip service to broadcast in the app itself.

Dom, even after the closing down of the app, did not close on the Vine community. He has been tweeting recently about ‘Byte’, the successor of Vine. Byte’s logo was tweeted by Dom on November 9th, 2018, and said that ‘Byte’ could be launching anytime soon in the Spring of 2019. The successor of Vine was supposed to come out early but Hofmann said that it was due to some “financial and legal issues.” He also said that ‘Byte’ would function independently and not under Twitter.

Vine was viewed by the users as both creative and monetary. Some of the famous Vine artists are Zach King, the magician who earned more than 1.4 Billion views. Other than this, Amanda Cerny, Logan Paul, Meghan McCarthy, Dwarf Mamba and KingBach. You can also check Vine compilations on YouTube.

Dom Hofmann showed us that entertainment does not need two-three hours of time. Even a small amount of time is sufficient enough to show one’s creativity and bring a smile on to people’s faces. He, in one way or the other, made us realize that happiness can be found even in the splits of seconds. The 6-second entertainment inventor is all prepped up to bring another entertainment app soon.

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.

Kenny A. Troutt : A Billionaire Who Once was Dirt Poor

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A major Republican donor and the owner of the elite thoroughbred horse farm in Versailles, Kenny Trout is one of the richest persons in the world. The life of the American billionaire was never this easy. As a kid, he went through the financial struggle and worked hard to get at the position where he stands right now. In school, when his teacher questioned him that what he wanted to become in future, he did not know what career he would choose, but he surely knew that he wanted to become rich.

Early Life

Troutt was born in 1948 in Mount Vernon, Illinois, United States. His father worked as a bartender. He was the eldest of his three siblings. Troutt did his schooling from the Mt. Vernon Township High School, and later, graduated from the Southern Illinois University, in 1971. Belonging to a poor family, he always intended to overcome his family’s financial conditions and become rich. Due to the shortage of money, he started working at a very young age, to support his family and earn extra bucks. He even sold insurance to subsidise his studies while he was in college.

Kenny Troutt
Image source: dmagazine.com

Career

After completing his graduation, with continues hard work, he co-founded Excel, a long distance phone service, along with his business partner Steve Smith, in 1988. Smith’s interest in the network marketing business, helped the two to start the company, as he had found much more scope in the same. Just in nine years, the company had earned revenue in billion dollars. Excel became the fastest growing company in the U.S., even faster than Microsoft. In 1996, it went public in the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ECI, becoming the youngest company ever to join the NYSE.

In the month of June, the very next year, Excel acquired the Telco Communications Group, followed by a merger with Teleglobe, in November 1998. The merger between the two companies brought lots of fortune to the two co-founders of Excel. Troutt and Smith became billionaires overnight.

Troutt retired as CEO on September 20, 1999, and was replaced by Christina Gold. Currently, Troutt serves as the chairman of Mt. Vernon Investments.

Personal Life

Troutt is married to Lisa E. Copeland and has three children with her. The family lives in their 13000 square foot grand estate in Dallas Texas. At present, he owns a 2,400-acre thoroughbred horse breeding and racing farm in Versailles, Kentucky, named WinStar Farm. In 2014, his net worth was estimated to be approx. US$1.5 billion.

Jacob Blackstock : The Person who Transformed the Emojis into More Realistic Bitmojis

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These days, we all are on social media sites, chatting our whole day away. Yes! And when it comes to expressing what we feel, words come after the emojis. Emojis is the integrated way of telling how you feel, and who knows better about Emojis than ‘BA’.

Confused about who is BA? BA is none other than Jacob Blackstock, the man behind “Bitmojis.” If you are an active social media user, you probably know what Bitmojis are. Bitmojis is an advanced version of emojis. it’s nothing else but ‘you’. Yes, Bitmojis is what you would see yourself as in an animated fantasy world. And the man behind this beautiful fantasy world, Jacob Blackstock or as he prefers himself to be called, ‘BA’ has a story which stands a must listen one.

Jacob
Image Source: businessinsider.com

The Toronto born boy had an exquisite interest in movies and drawings. Jacob was deeply influenced by some of the movies like Mary Poppins and Poltergeist. He believed in himself and saw his future in them. The day he got to know that only the humans create those movies, he decided to do something in the same field. His mother gave him tips about his speech and told him he must not forget about mentioning her when he would receive an Oscar. His passion for his dream to do something in movies led him to write a short story, “ Mr Beaver in Space”, at the mere age of four. While in school, he not only wrote but also, produced and acted in a play.

He also had quite an interest in drawing. It was almost like that he started drawing the day he learnt how to hold a pencil. He was too much into cartoons and comics and who knew that he would do something so extraordinary out of something so simple.

The ‘movies’ interest was not over yet. He got a job in a film studio and made an 11 minutes movie, which was animated using stop motion. It took him three long years to create the 11 minutes movie. It was Outrageous, but at the same time, he was also exhausted by this. He wanted to do something else, something different.

Keeping this in mind, he started working on a new idea. The project got the funding of the Canadian government, and all BA did was that he would sit every day on his desk, take a drawing sheet, and draw a 10×8 inches panel. He drew, drew and drew. Not thinking about what is going wrong, or without detailing, beautifying all the stuff he made, he drew and drew. Although he was not completely sure about what he was doing, he went on for a few months, and considering the work he was doing, he decided that something has to come out of it, and it cannot belong to the garbage.

Soon, he realised that it was too much work for him. He became tired of drawing, and that’s when he created an online comic builder. It was an easy-to-use tool and created comics faster than ever. The real strike for him was when he discovered that this comic builder designed people. The comic builder turned out to be wilder than his own imagination.

That’s when he came up with Bitstrips with the help of his high school friend Jesse Brown, in 2007. Based on his thinking that the comics take a lot of time, Bitstrips allowed people to make comics even with little artistic skills. Jesse referred it to as “YouTube for comics”. At first, it was meant for the educational purpose, i.e. was used in schools, but soon they noticed that it was also being used outside the class. In 2012, a Facebook version for Bitstrips was launched, and within months, it gained heavy user amount, i.e., more than 10 million users. An app was launched, and just in the time of few months, it became a hit. It was among the most downloaded apps across the globe. Upon which, BA and Brown received funding from Horizons Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
In October 2014, BA came with Bitmoji, which gave users the independence to create stickers which featured comic characters of Bitstrips.

“Texting is making the conversation more convenient than ever, but it’s also stripped away a lot of the things that make communication human, we think one of the most important things that are still missing is identity. If you think about history, 99 per cent of human communication has been face-to-face,” said BA upon the purpose of Bitmoji (Source- Business Insider).

He further said that Bitmoji expresses what’s inside you. “Your avatar doesn’t have a bad hair day,” he said. Bitmoji really stood as the perfect animated avatar of the person who used it. It relevantly shows the best you!
In the year 2016, speculation started rising that Snapchat wanted to buy Bitstrips, which it did around for $100 Million. Bitstrips now only focused on ‘Bitmoji’, and soon after, a Snapchat update with integration with Bitmoji was released. Bitmoji became the most downloaded app on the iOS app store in countries like Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom and the United States.

According to BA, Bitmoji is the “next level” or “beyond” emojis. Bitmoji releases new updates very quickly and sometimes even within 24 hours. Bitmoji currently, is a part of emoji and is gaining its spice by getting involved to Tinder to create something that shows the love side of ours.

BA predicted the needs of the communication of the future, and he presented it to the world which got famous just in a jiffy. Such is the power of imagination. And so is the story of BA or we may say, the CEO and Co-Founder of Bitstrips.

Motorola : A Historic Tech Company that Even Contributed in the First Moon Landing

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Two brothers, Paul V. and Joseph E. Galvin from Illinois, founded Motorola as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, in 1928. The basis of the company was the battery-eliminator plans and manufacturing equipment, that they had purchased at an auction for $750 when the Stewart Battery Company had got bankrupt. The company’s first office was a small section, of a rented building at 847 West Harrison Street. The two had started the company with a capital of $565, and manufactured battery eliminators in the very beginning.

Unfortunately, the advancement of the radios led the demand for the battery-eliminators to an end. At the same time, some of the radio manufacturers were developing radio sets for cars, so the Galvin brothers also decided to develop low-cost radio sets for cars. In 1930’s Radio Manufacturers Association convention in Atlantic City, they demonstrated their car radio sets and were showered with orders.

At the same time, Paul renamed the company to Motorola, a word derived from Motor and Victorola. Soon it became the most popular company to sell the car radios. A few months later, the company was again rebranded, and now it was called Motorola Inc. The major customers of those car radios included the police departments and municipalities. In 1930, the company also started a branch for research and development program with Dan Noble, who joined Motorola as director of research.

Motorola
Image Source: megason.co

After the world war began in 1939, the company started manufacturing the hand-held AM SCR-536 radios for the military, under the World War II military production contracts.

In 1943, Motorola went public, and by the year 1947, it started manufacturing televisions. It also carried the first calls on Illinois Bell telephone company’s new car radiotelephone service in Chicago. In 1952, Motorola had its first international subsidiary in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The Chicago-based graphic designer, Morton Goldsholl, designed the famous batwing logo of Motorola in 1954, which was launched publically in 1955. In the same year, the company introduced the world’s first commercial high-power germanium-based transistor.

The continues to progress in the field of radio transmission led Motorola to win a contract from NASA, under which, it supplied radio equipment for most of the NASA space-flights for decades, including the 1969’s moon landing. In fact, the famous words of Neil Armstrong, “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” were transmitted on a Motorola transceiver from the Moon.

Starting with just five employees in 1928, in almost thirty years, Motorola had grown to 14,000 worldwide employees, till 1960. In 1973, the company manufactured the first handheld telephone, followed by its first microprocessor, the 8-bit MC6800, in 1974 and the 32-bit microprocessor, the MC68000 in 1983, that played as an instigator in the computing revolution in 1984.

In 1984, Motorola introduced the DynaTAC 8000X telephone, the world’s first commercial cellular device and demonstrated the first digital cell phone in cellular system and phones, using GSM standard in Hanover, Germany, in 1991. In the mid 90’s it also launched the first flip phone called the MicroTAC and the clam phone the StarTAC.

Motorola along with Cisco launched world’s first commercial GPRS cellular network to BT Cellnet in the United Kingdom, in 2000, and the first wireless cable modem gateway, in 2002. In 2005, the company had sold over 130 million units of Motorola RAZR, but the very next year, it failed to repeat the same success with the next model of RAZR, the RAZR V3.

Motorola went through a split in 2011, leading to the formation of two separate companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions.

On August 15, 2011, seven months after Motorola Mobility became an independent company, Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. Later in 2014, the company was acquired by Lenovo, after it paid US$2.91 billion to Google.

In those years Motorola faced a lot of failures in the field of smartphone manufacturing, and the major reason being, its unfriendly environmental practices. Motorola and Arizona Water Co. were found liable for the water pollution in the Scottsdale, Arizona area, and the main source of trichloroethylene (TCE). The contamination led to a ban on the use of drinking water for three days, affecting 5000 people residing in the area. On this, the company initiated a no PVC policy in the manufacturing of its smartphones. Motorola also promotes the use of recycled products in the production of its new products.

Ben Silbermann : The Co-founder of World’s Largest Professional Community

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A believer of persistence and continuous hard work, Ben Silbermann, is an American billionaire Internet entrepreneur and one of the three co-founders of Pinterest. Silbermann would have never thought that his childhood habit of collecting things, like bugs, postal stamps and baseball cards, will make him a billionaire one day. The photo sharing and pinning them onto a pinning board, on Pinterest, isn’t different from his old hobby of collecting things. And now, Pinterest has become one of the most used social media platforms that boast over 20 million users worldwide.

Early Life

Silbermann was born on 14 July 1982. He was a native of Des Moines, living with his parents Jane Wang and Neil Silbermann, both of whom were ophthalmologists. He did his schooling from Des Moines Central Academy and attended the Research Science Institute at MIT. When he was in school, he also went through a heart transplant surgery. In 2003, he received a graduate degree in political science from the Yale University.

Ben Silbermann
Image Source: Flickr

Career

After graduating, Silbermann got a chance to work with Google, as a member of the online advertising group. At the time, he became more interested in programming and conceived an idea of a startup. He discussed the matter with his friend and the future co-founder of Pinterest, Paul Sciarra, and quit his job. Sciarra started teaching Silbermann the basic programming, and both started working on an iOS app, Tote. Tote was a fail, and the two started thinking of a new idea that could help them with their startup.

Founding Pinterest

The two thought of creating an app that could help the people for keeping the necessary records in the phone, and see the things they wanted to see. The idea was great for the people who wanted to avoid filling up of their email accounts, with unnecessary catalogues. But, the timing of the idea was not that good, as at the same time the financial crisis had occurred, and nobody was ready to invest in technology startups.

Ben and Paul had meetings with many of the capitalists, but everybody was happy investing their money in gold. At last, Silbermann found out about a competition happening in NYU, which had a huge cash prize for the winners. Though the two won the second prize with no money, they were able to meet a few investors., one of whom was convinced to fund the half of the round, only if they could get the other half of the round.

Finally, they managed to arrange the money and started working on their startup project. Silbermann had met his third partner Evan Sharp, through a common friend, when Sharp was studying at the NYU. Evan and Silbermann shared a common interest of collecting things and wanted to create something related to it for their themselves.

In the startup project, Evan also joined hands with Silbermann, and in 2009, they started developing Pinterest. In March 2010, they launched the site as a closed beta, soon followed by the launch of an invitation-only open beta. Just within nine months of its launch, Pinterest had 10000 users, and in March 2011, the company launched an iPhone app. Silbermann contacted 5000 of Pinterest users, through letters, and even met a few of them in person, to receive feedback from them. Until the summer of 2011, the three founders of the company were operating the company from a small apartment.

In late October 2013, the website was valued at $3.8 billion. By October 2016, it had 150 million monthly active users, and in June 2017, Pinterest raised $150 million of funding from its investors.

Personal Life

Silbermann lives in San Francisco, California, with his wife Divya Bhaskaran and two children. Forbes estimated his net worth at $1.6 billion as of 2018. He was listed 12 among America’s Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 (2016) and also got featured with Mark Zuckerberg on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 (2014).