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4chan

Christopher Poole : The Founder of 4Chan Who Tasted Success Without Being Known

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The rise of computers and programming languages has brought a revolution in the world. The programming languages have become the biggest contribution to the world and the growth of the economy. That is why most of the people are not hesitant about taking a step in the same field. Little kids and teenagers are the ones who are more curious about them, and there is another reason behind it. The magic a person feels behind building things only by coding makes it interesting enough for the kids and the adults. Also, it has helped many people to grow financially as well.

One such teenage coder was Christopher Poole, who was only fifteen when he founded one of the biggest forum-based social network 4chan. An American enthusiast, Chris was always into programming and loved what he could do with it. Without letting people know, he used to code almost every night.

Chris Poole was born in 1988 in New York City. He lived with his mom and wanted to build a platform that would help him earn some extra money. While in school, he used to create comedy content and post it on ‘Something Awful’, a comedy website.

chris poole 4Chan
Image Source: cdn.vox-cdn.com

Chris was inspired by Japan’s famous imageboard of ‘Futaba Channel’ (2Chan) and wanted to create something similar for America as well. When he was still in school, he started working on a new project and developed 4Chan, the American version of the Japanese imageboard. He went on to follow the source code of Futaba Channel and took the help of AltaVista’s Babel Fish online translator to translate the code.

On 1 October 2003, when he was just 15, he finally launched 4Chan by pseudonym ‘Moot’. He used the name Moot as he did not want to mix his private and professional life. That is why there is not much information about Chris’s early life. His real identity was only revealed on 9 July 2008, after five years he launched 4Chan, that too, by The Wall Street Journal.

After launching 4Chan and completing his school education, Chris joined the Virginia Commonwealth University. But eventually, he had to quit college only after a few semesters, such that he could focus on his startup.

Soon, 4Chan emerged as a place where people could create and share meme and animes. They had the facility to share the content anonymously as well as non-anonymously. The platform was a great success, and even before revealing his real identity, he got the chance to speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University as Moot. He had become an influencer in no time.

In 2008, Leopoldo Godoy of Brazilian TV Globo called the site as “the ground zero of Western web culture”. He was named as the world’s most influential person of 2008 by the ‘Time’ magazine after it conducted an open internet poll.

In February 2010, Chris spoke at the ‘TED2010’ conference held at Long Beach, California. In the same year, he also raised a $625,000 for his next startup ‘Canvas Networks’, which he launched in January 2011. But unfortunately, he had to shut the platform due to the security breaches the site was facing.

Though he was running 4Chan with the name of Moot, he always conducted Q&As for the users and answered their questions. Chris worked for 4Chan as the administrator and had already left the job of programming at his company. He, after working for more than 10 years for the company, decided to step down from his post of administrator in 2015. During his career with 4Chan, he achieved a maximum user engagement, i.e. over 20 million monthly visitors to the site.

He announced the news on 21 January 2015 and on 23rd January conducted another Q&A on the platform and a live stream on YouTube.

In September 2015, 4Chan was acquired by Japanese internet entrepreneur Hiroyuki Nishimura for an undisclosed amount. In March next year, Chris revealed through a blog post that he will be joining Google. He joined the company and is still working as an employee.

Though Chris has been secretive about his life, one thing he has always been clear at the right to anonymity. The success he received at such an early age never put a bad influence on him. In fact, he always stayed away from the limelight.

skype

Skype : A Communication App that Won the World

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In the last few decades, the world has changed a lot. What seemed to be impossible a few years ago, is being executed with zero effort today. With the boom in entrepreneurship and startups getting the hang of the wave, human life is at its technological best. Our generation has witnessed a large number of success stories, but not every one of it has managed to stay with us for so long. The inventions that change the world are the ones that feed the depriving hearts of society. The success story of Skype is one such idea that changed the very nature of web business by revolutionizing the chat connectivity of the virtual world.

Founded in the year 2003 by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, Skype turned out to be the biggest surprise that changed the face of online communication for the years to come. One can say that Skype lessened the distance between people, or in other words, started bringing people together. It gained almost 6000 subscribers within just one week of its launch, and this is when the duo realized that they are in for something huge. This realization proved to be true as we look at the trail they have left behind.

Janus and Niklas developed the application with the help of a group of highly skilled individuals, namely Ahti Heinia, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn. The most attractive aspect of Skype is that it is free. During a time when the telecom industry charged a fortune for international calls, Skype provided free video calls through the usage of P2P connectivity. It was an actual boon to the people who were separated from their loved ones through distance. It also mitigated the location issues for major business meetings and other official programs.

skype founders
Image Source: taliawebs.com

Like every huge success story, Skype, too, has a humble beginning. Zennstrom was collecting the telephone bills of his friend in Europe when he realized how huge the telecom companies charge for long-distance phone calls. This is what led to the invention of Skype, as simple as that. They wanted to avert the escalating telephone bills and wanted to make communications across the globe more cheap and efficient.

Within just two years of its inception, Skype already had 20 million active users and was growing at an exponential rate of 5 new users per second. This growth soon attracted a lot of attention from huge names such as eBay and Microsoft. eBay later in 2005, acquired Skype for a whopping sum of 3.5 billion USD. The most successful project of the internet industry, Skype, again get attracted the interest of other tech giants. And, this time, Microsoft acquired Skype for 8.5 billion USD.

The innovation by a team of young minds changed the way people talk across the globe. It was an extravagant success, as there is no greater deed than filling the deficiency of society.

Back in 2003, it was the need for a more efficient and low-cost communication system. The founders say that they were very naïve and highly optimistic in their journey throughout Skype. But it was this same spirit that led them to launch the service. They did not dive into the what-ifs and other nitty-gritty of all the things that could go wrong. The other main highlight of the concept was that there was nothing much complicated about functioning. There were no complicated procedures or troubling interface. Everything was simple and clear. This also was a contributing factor to the immense success of the idea.

Every big change starts from a small spark. This spark comes to every one of us. The ones who can latch on to the spark and ignite a fire become successful. These build unicorn companies, multi-million dollar empires and some even end up becoming legends. Skype provides the biggest example of how small ideas can revolutionize the world. It started a chain of changes that still ripples across the surface of the virtual world and how people communicate with each other.

kik

Ted Livingston : The Journey of the Founder of Kik Messenger

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Establishing a new innovative start-up is the ultimate dream of every young entrepreneur out there. And, especially, if a mind has both excellent technical skills and impressive business strategies, wonders can be created. But, how many of us realize that the real voyage begins after one has accomplished his or her dreams? Because with great power comes great responsibilities. Reaching the zenith is easier than holding onto it. It is obvious that one will face ups and downs during the entire journey of success, but one must be strong enough to not give up or choose a wrong path.

Ted Livingston, founder of Kik Messenger and an incredible tech genius, was sentenced to death in 9th June 2019 for committing fraud, drug trafficking and an endless chain of illegal activities. He confessed all of his crimes saying that he did everything to save his company from bankruptcy, though the press release gives enough evidence of Kik’s short-term success. He started the company after he was rejected by RIM (Research in Motion), which led him to join the Velocity program, and finally, open his own start-up. So, let’s have a look into Livingston’s life before he hit such a massive crisis.

Early Life

Livingston was born in 1987, in Toronto, Ontario to a prosperous family. His father was a financial advisor, and his mother worked in the advertising sector. From a very young age, Livingston showed a great interest in building robots, and he joined the robotics team of his school. He went to Crescent School in Toronto and graduated from there in 2005.

Higher Studies and Early Career

Ted Livingston founder kik
Image Source: Twitter

Livingston pursued a Bachelor’s degree in mechatronics at the University of Waterloo, but he dropped out later. During his time at the university, he took part in the Waterloo co-op program and landed placements at Honda and City of Toronto Government.

In 2007, he started working as a Systems Engineering Project Coordinator at RIM, and then, as a Technical Product Management Coordinator. The internship was a part of his engineering course, and, Livingston once said about it that the best part about the internship was having a smartphone with a full data plan which was very expensive at that time.

Since he acquired a very lucrative position at RIM, during his internship, he got to work with every product manager individually and learnt a lot of new things. He was so good at his job that his boss advised him not to go for a full-time job in RIM and rather open his own company. This was all the motivation he needed, and hence, he turned down the job at RIM in 2008.

Founding KiK

Ted went back to Waterloo to complete his Bachelor’s degree, but somehow he ended up participating in the Velocity program followed by founding KiK. At first, Livingston created KiK Music, which was then known as Unsycned for RIM (later known as Blackberry). The app was connected to BBM to allow users to share soundtracks via messenger. But, KiK had bigger plans, which were blatantly turned down by RIM. So, Livingston and his team started working on the Kik messaging app on their own, and it was released on 19th October 2010.

While messaging apps like WhatsApp and Ping were already ruling the market, KiK hit one million users within 15 days of its release. Pretty impressive for an infant company, isn’t it? Though KiK was initially released for iOS and BlackBerry, BlackBerry removed it in November 2010 from BlackBerry App World followed by filing a lawsuit against KiK, which was settled later in 2013.

Success of KiK

In 2014, KiK raised $38.3 million from Series C funding followed by $50 million in the next year, thus resulting in KiK’s total worth to $1 billion. Gradually, KiK decided to raise funding in cryptocurrencies, and it raised $125 million cryptocurrencies through an ICO in September 2017.

In June 2018, Kin Coin (for cryptocurrencies) was released officially in Beta version, and in the next month, Kinit Beta App was released which was exclusively for the US residents.

Death Sentence of Livingston

The news of Livingston’s death sentence hit like an unexpected jolt to the world. He was accused of multiple reasons which included conduction of an illegal ICO, drug trafficking, prostitution and fraud. And finally, he was given a death sentence by an SEC Commission.

shopclues

Sandeep Aggarwal : Serial Entrepreneur, Angel Investor and the Founder of Shopclues

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The emerging Indian start-ups are bringing a great revolution in the entrepreneurial world. The young Indian minds and their untamed passion is creating history in the 21st-century economy. But, it isn’t always the young minds, because it is known that experience makes you wiser.

Sandeep Aggarwal is one such passion-driven entrepreneur who has successfully launched two start-ups, Shopclues and Droom, and now is one of the most influential men in the business world. The idea of Shopclues was pondering in his mind since 2010, but finally, he founded it in July 2011, followed by the launch of Droom in April 2014. The entire business was set up in Silicon Valley, and later, it shifted to India. Aggarwal faced a lot of difficulties and failed plans before he finally founded Shopclues.

Early Education

After passing school, Aggarwal pursued a degree in B.Com followed by a master’s from Indore. While doing his master’s, he also interned with Kotak Mahindra, Mumbai.

The First Step into the Professional World

Sandeep Aggarwal Founder Shopclues
Image Source: techcircle.in

Aggarwal first stepped into the professional world when he landed an internship in Kotak Mahindra, in 1995. The internship was in Mumbai, and it was his first chance to interact with intelligent minds around him and learn from them. He was perfectly groomed in this duration of his internship on how to deal with people and work at a professional level. He realized that most of us might have proper skills and knowledge, but only a few knew how to expose it professionally. Aggarwal, in one of its interviews, said that this internship also helped him strengthen his analytical skills and strategic thinking, apart from business communication and personality development.

Life before Shopclues happened

After completing his master’s degree, Aggarwal worked in the field of investment banking. While working in it, something changed his mind, and he decided to move to the US. He joined the Washington University, St. Louis, USA to pursue an MBA degree, and after receiving the degree, he worked for two different companies. After leaving these jobs, he joined Wallstreet and served eight years as an internet analyst, where he was given research covers on companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo! etc. Aggarwal is also a chartered member of TiE Silicon Valley.

While Aggarwal was still working as an internet analyst, in 2010, he visited India quite a few times to launch research coverage for MakeMyTrip. It was the time when the idea of launching an online marketplace clicked in his mind. He started planning about his business with a website called DealsClues.com, but finally, he settled with Shopclues.com, in 2010 and established this marketplace in Silicon Valley.

Founding of Shopclues.com

With Radhika Ghai Aggarwal (Sandeep Aggarwal’s wife), Mrinal Chatterjee and Sanjay Sethi, he started his new business in Delaware. By September 2011, the team moved to India and permanently settled in Gurgaon. At the very beginning of Shopclues, Aggarwal raised $1.95 million from his social circle.

In 26th January 2012, the public beta version of Shopclues was released, and by next month, the team size expanded to 25 from only 3-4 members. The Alexa ranking dropped from 14,000 at the beginning of the year to 200 only in August of the same year. The company started making a jaw-dropping profit with more than 2 million monthly visitors.

In January 2013, Shopclues has ranked as the fifth largest e-commerce companies in India, and the Alexa ranking dropped to 90. The business was progressing swiftly, until, July 2013, when he found legal charges filed against him for the time he worked as an internet analyst in Wallstreet. Aggarwal said that it was a time of sheer crisis in his life, and it almost took a year or so for him to get back on track. He didn’t have any choice other than avoiding the press and any other formal role in Shopclues. His family suffered, too. But today, Shopclues, his first company is worth $1.1 billion, and it is one of the largest online stores to serve in India.

Droom

Aggarwal founded Droom in April 2014, and it was the first-ever online platform for selling and buying automobiles (used and new) and services related to the same. Droom has a very strong founding team with more than 75 years of experience in technology. It was only after a year of its founding that Droom raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Lightbox.

Even today, it is India’s most trusted platform for automobiles.

The emotional outburst

In 2017, Aggarwal was in the spotlight for posting about a private matter in social media which was concerning his wife, Sanjay Sethi and Shopclues. An emotional outburst in social media is often not considered as a very clever judgment especially for business tycoons like Aggarwal. But, he said it was a very fragile moment for him and it was definitely a mistake to attract negative attention. Though he went through an emotional turmoil, the companies didn’t suffer any such loss but his personal life is still a very big question mark.

discord

Jason Citron : A Video Game Lover and the Founder of the Digital Distribution Platform Discord

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The video game industry is vast and is growing even more through online gaming and live game streaming. Over a decade ago, people could only play games on the desktops or gaming consoles. But now, they can play games online with other gamers as well. While playing, they can even talk to each other in real-time. This is called the real evolution of technology. Earlier, the gamers made the use of other expensive chat apps, like TeamSpeak, Mumble, and Ventrilo to communicate through chat at the time, they played games. But soon, they got their hands on more convenient and a lighter platform, i.e. Discord.

Discord is a VoIP application that Jason Citron, an American developer and entrepreneur, developed for the video gaming community. With Discord, the gamers are capable of sending and receiving texts, images, videos and communicate, while playing a game using the internet in real-time.

Early Life

Jason Citron, the founder and CEO of Discord, had always been a video game lover. His father, and his grandfather, both were businessmen. His first encounter with video games was through one of his childhood friends, who introduced him to NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). Later, when in middle school, in Florida, he opted for computers as one of his subjects in school. One of his friends at school was good at fundamentals of QBASIC and taught him the basics of programming.

Jason Citron
Image Source: vox.com

Inspired by his father, he also aspired to be an entrepreneur. By the time he was 13, he had learned a lot about computers and started teaching the basics of computers to people older than him and charged them a small amount of fee. When he was sixteen, he started part-time freelancing and wrote codes for different companies.

Since, he had always been into gaming and coding, after completing his graduation from the Full Sail University in Florida, he started working for a game company, where he worked on a gaming console in San Rafael. Meanwhile, he moved to a new apartment where he lived with the students of the University of California, Berkeley, where he got to meet Rohan Relan. Rohan’s uncle, Peter, was the owner of an incubator called YouWeb that supported mobile and gaming-focused businesses.

Building Aurora Feint; The First Startup

As Citron was into starting his own business, he met Peter and joined his company as one of the developers. At the incubator, he started working on a new iPhone game and built a company named Aurora Feint along with a fellow developer Danielle Cassley.

With the launch of the iPhone in 2007, Jason Citron got the opportunity to build new games that would work with the small screens. He focussed on creating games based on RPG and puzzles. The company launched the first version of Aurora Feint for free to use for iOS during the Christmas in 2008. The game was a success but was not making any revenues. Citron was looking for a better business model but had no clue how to work with newly built iPhones.

After just a few months the game reached one million people, but still, there was nothing that would pay back Citron and his company.

Founding OpenFeint

One day, while discussing with the YouWeb Owner Peter, Citron realised that the iPhone did not have Xbox live in it, but their Aurora Feint 2 did have a similar feature. It was the kind of first asynchronous MMOG (massively multiplayer online game). So they decided to build a separate SDK that other platform could integrate and use.

In February 2009, Citron launched the beta version of the software at TechCrunch, where he got to showcase it in front of hundreds of developers. This way, the software also got hundreds of signups, and thus, he was able to raise the money to produce the next version of the product. The software was free, but the company monetize the sale through revenue sharing, mobile storefronts, and game features.

The company carried out its first round of funding at the end of 2009, which was led by DeNA in Japan and raised $6 million. In the second round of funding, the company raised $5 million. By 2010, the company had more than 10 million users registered on the network. In October 2010, Intel Capital also invested a $3 million in the company. The next year, Japanese company GREE, Inc. acquired OpenFeint for a whopping amount of US$104 million.

The Journey from Hammer and Chisel to Discord

After selling the company, Jason Citron started another startup named Hammer and Chisel, a game development company, that launched its first game named Fates Forever, in 2014. Citron tried to launch the game as the Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), but due to the lack of good communication methods, it could not be commercially successful. This led Cistron to develop a new chat service, that would help people to chat in real-time while playing video games online.

Citron was able to get a sufficient amount of funding from YouWeb, Benchmark capital and Tencent for the development. Finally, he launched the first version of the product in May 2015, with the name Discord. Soon, the platform was famous and was used by the esports, LAN tournament gamers, and by the Twitch.tv streamers. In January 2016, the company received an investment of worth $20 million. In the same year, the growth rate for the software had reached a million users per month. By the end of the year, the software had registered 25 million users worldwide, and in December 2017, it recognised a total 90 million users, subscribed to the platform and raised $50 million by December.

By the end of 2018, the company valued at $2 billion and raised an additional $150 million, in a round of funding, led by Greenoaks Capital. In May 2019, the company announced that it has more than 250 million users across the world, who use the software.

The reason behind the success of Discord has been the consistent hard work of Jason Citron, and the skills, as an entrepreneur he possessed in his genes.

Porsche

Ferdinand Porsche : The Legendary German Engineer who Founded Porsche

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Being born into a family of a plumbing business, Ferdinand Porsche was also expected to adopt the same profession. But, his interest resided somewhere else. He was intrigued by electricity, designing and machinery. He carved a deep niche for mechanical work, and his passion changed his life entirely. He started from serving as a chauffeur to be known as the Great German Engineer.

A Sneak Peek to Porsche’s Life

Porsche was born into a German family on 3 September 1865, in Liberec (now a part of the Czech Republic). He was an automotive engineer and probably the best of his time. Before he founded his own company, he worked for many influential people designing the Lohner-Porsche, Volkswagen-Beetle and many other intimidating cars. He also received the Car Engineer of the Century award in 1999, 48 years after he passed away. He played a major role in World War II and was a member of the Nazi Party.

Early Life and Career

Porsche was the third child in his family, and his father, Anton Porsche ran a plumbing business. Though he grew a very strong interest in the mechanical aspect of engineering, he didn’t devote his entire time into experimenting with different equipment. He helped his father out in the workshop during the daytime and went to Imperial Technical School during the nights. After he finished his school and by the time he was 18, he got a job in Bela Egger and Co., an electrical company in Vienna. During his time in this company, he built his first electric hub motor.

Ferdinand Porsche
Image Source: automotivehalloffame.org

In 1897, he started working for Jacob Lohner and Co. in their newly established Electric Car Company. The first design of the company was Egger-Lohner vehicle or Porsche P1, a carriage-like car. In 1900, the modified version of this vehicle (from two wheels to four wheels) was displayed in the Paris World Exhibition, and this masterpiece received much appreciation. In 1901, Porsche designed Lohner-Porsche, the first model of hybrid electric vehicle (HEV). Porsche also upgraded his existing vehicles with many engines from Daimler and Panhard, breaking many speed records.

In 1905, he was awarded the Potting prize for being Austria’s most outstanding automotive engineer. By this time, he gradually got involved in the military services served as a chauffeur to the then crowned prince of Austria.

Working for the Major Automobile Companies

In 1906, Porsche was hired by Austro Daimler as the chief designer. In 1910, Daimler won the Prinz-Heinrich Fahrt, an automobile contest. The Austro-Daimler car for which they won the contest was solely designed by Porsche. He also designed many race cars, aircraft engines, trolley-buses and many other vehicles using HEV technology during his time at Austro-Daimler. In 1916, Porsche became the Managing Director, and in the same year, he received the honorary doctorate from Vienna University of Technology. In 1923, he left the company due to differences in future perception of the company’s development.

Soon after he left Austro-Daimler, he was hired as a Technical Director in Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft. For his excellent work in this company, he received another honorary doctorate from Stuttgart Technical University. Again in 1929, Porsche left the merged company, Daimler-Benz, as his ideas for developing a light-weight Mercedes Benz was not accepted by the company’s board.

He started working for another company, but due to the Great Depression, his engineering skills had become almost needless to the world.

Founding Porsche

Though the economic condition dried up during the 1930s, Porsche made his way to establishing his own company. In April 1931, Porsche built his own consulting firm (for vehicles and engines) in Stuttgart with the financial support of Anton Piech and Adolf Rosenberger.

He started taking up big projects from reputed companies, but he also worked on his own designs. He managed to impress some companies that could sponsor his own projects, but eventually, all of them lost interest due to some of the other reasons. Also, the economic condition of that period wasn’t in favour of any newly born business.

In the early 1930s, Hitler wanted every citizen of his nation to own a car, which led to the hiring of Porsche for this project, the people’s car (Volkswagen). Soon, he got involved in many other Nazi projects. The first two prototypes of Volkswagen were released by 1935, and by the next three-four years, a lot of redesigning and pre-production took place.

In the meantime, a lawsuit was filed against Porsche by a Czech company, claiming breach of the company’s patent. The matter was finally resolved in 1961, ten years after Porsche’s death.

Life after World War II

The company went through a severe loss during the war, but he was ordered to continue with the Volkswagen designs. But, before the project could restart, he was captured by French authorities as a war criminal.

Ferry Porsche, Porsche’s son tried to run the business while he was in prison. He was finally got released on 5th August 1947, and in the meantime, Ferry designed Porsche 356, the first car to have the family name. Ferry rebuilt the business once again and made huge profits.

While the entire family returned to Stuttgart to re-establish their business, Porsche died in 30th January 1951 due to a stroke.