This business idea was born in 2016, but the journey really began in 2014.

After working for a company for 8 years, I hadn’t really gotten far financially and felt stuck. I decided to find a job with better financial prospects and the possibility of advancement. After 6 months of searching, I was hired at a new employer and managed to double my salary in one fell swoop!

Just start! That little voice inside your head giving you doubts will always be there. Push through that voice and keep going until you reach a point where you’re lost.

In 2011, coming out of college, I miserably tried to start a penny auction website. I studied Political Science at University, which had absolutely no bearing on this idea. I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial and was consumed by this auction model. I had my own specific mechanics that I thought would make the game a lot more fair for the average consumer. But alas, 6-8 months later, after burning through thousands of dollars trying to get the technology right, I was absolutely nowhere.

I was resigned to not give up, but the mechanics of the auction are critical to the smooth operation of the website and if you can’t get it right you don’t have a business. So I decided to start taking on some freelance writing work, just to get some cash in.

One thing led to another and I started getting some bigger clients with bigger asks. Eventually, I snowballed hiring some writers and copy editors. Turning this thing into a full-time business operation.

I am a licensed attorney in India and right after my master’s in law, I started working with a leading company as a lawyer. I worked there for about two years before I quit my job to become more location independent.

Choose a niche in whatever you start. It is critical for streamlining your efforts and make money.

My job paid me well but I worked 12 hours a day, I was exhausted by the end of each day, spent my weekends sleeping and I almost quit the things I liked to do - for example, sketching, yoga, traveling, etc.

After the second video game company I founded, Acclaim Games, was acquired by Walt Disney (Playdom was the original buyer), I wanted to take a break from the entrepreneurial side of the business and become an investor. I set a personal goal for myself to invest in 60 companies, and since I was living in LA, I decided to invest in startups in LA too.

Where do you start with that goal? How do you find entrepreneurs to support? As I started this journey, I realized that an accelerator model was quite effective for my purposes, and so StartEngine, the accelerator, was born.

We offered companies $20,000 for a 10% stake in the company and 90 days of mentorship. Given we were one of the first accelerators in LA, we had a lot of interest. Ultimately, we accepted around 5% of applicants and had 60 companies participate in the StartEngine accelerator in total.

Finding my first drop shipping supplier was by searching over AliExpress and looking for the supplier with the best reviews and years in business and most importantly communication reliability I would get on skype calls with the suppliers and do a mini-interview to see if they fit the criteria I was looking for, also another important thing was making sure my supplier had a license to sell these products I was marketing/selling.

My supplier would handle all the logistics like inventory and fulfillment that’s how the drop shipping business model works.

I set up an LLC in the US I got an accountant to manage the books using a Shopify app called Taxjar.

Ok, this has the potential to be a long one, so maybe grab a cuppa or a coffee ☕.

I'm a first-time entrepreneur with a fairly eclectic background.

I studied French and Russian at uni (Oui, Я немного говорю по русски!) and began my career in policy design for the UK government. After 2 years of trying to fit in and failing terribly, I decided to jump ship and retrain as a UX designer.

I was terrified, but also fired up. I had zero experience of anything to do with being self-employed, I had literally never sent a manual invoice the day that I quit my job. I don't even think I had a business bank account by that point.

I have always considered myself an entrepreneur, and have started quite a few businesses. For many years, I had a business called Legal Cloud Solutions. We were 100% focused on the legal industry, helping lawyers systemize their operations through custom made software. We felt that there was a huge opportunity in the market, looking at how manual all of their processes are. We found out that lawyers are old school and they do not like changes!

On top of that, I had a technical partner that did the actual coding. Even though I had a full understanding of the processes, built the flows, and can read code; I’m still not a developer, so could not build the actual product. That was always a challenge with my partner and we drifted off.

One lazy day, browsing Product Hunt, I came across a tool called Glide apps. The tagline was “create an app from a Google Sheet”, and that piqued my interest. I definitely could do that! I opened up my account and started playing around. In 3 hours, I had built an app for a solar panel business I have where I could track my proposals and clients (something like a mini CRM).

Unknowingly, Savvy and Suite has been brewing for the last 15 years. I began working in my father’s accounting firm when I was 12 doing basic data entry of the tax forms. Every year I learned more and more until 18 when I was able to complete a full tax return on my own. Since then I have dedicated myself to developing my skills and really crafted my own approach to tax preparation.

Stay true to yourself and committed even during the low times, your success will come.

Over the years I have worked with companies from so many different industries and I learned that every company, even in the same industry, operates differently. Every entrepreneur has their own method of growing their business and respectively, spend their money that way. By getting to know each and every one of my clients to the smallest detail of their habits, I am able to create a tax return that reflects their true expenses. In this way, I am ensuring that no deduction is overlooked and the tax savings are optimized. The cookie-cutter approach just doesn’t cut it for anyone. No pun intended!

I’m the son of a therapist and an artist, and both sides of that upbringing prepared me well to manage a creative business! I was always playing with code and design growing up, and was lucky enough to have my dad’s tech hand-me-downs to learn on.

I regret bootstrapping because it forced us into making decisions based on the fear of running out of money, rather than on trying to find long-term value.

I majored in Mathematics at NYU, but while in classes I started to get the itch to design again. I did some portfolio pieces in photoshop but needed a website. I taught myself the basics by spending hours in Barnes & Noble reading every web design and development book I could find (even though I couldn’t afford to take them home) and got hooked.

In 2012 I was working for a small company as an IT Director, and they tasked me with rebuilding their eCommerce website. As I started looking at available platforms, I found an article by Justin comparing WooCommerce to another platform. He seemed really knowledgeable, so I reached out to him to ask some questions and I ended up bringing him on as a consultant for the project.

We worked really well together and the project had a very successful outcome, so we stayed in touch. A couple of months later we had a chance to work together on a joint consulting project, which led to more consulting for companies that needed help with their eCommerce stores.

You rarely get it right the first time. You make decisions based on the best available information, then you learn from the results and iterate.

I began my business career with the family in-store sampling business, C.A. Courtesy, in the 1990s, while at the same time attending college at Johnson and Wales University, where I pursued a degree in Web Management & Internet Commerce.

I’ve always had a knack for marketing and technology, and when I left C.A. Courtesy, I was the Vice President of Marketing and Technology.

People don’t remember what you say as much as they remember how they felt when you said it.

Tim and I met during an online hackathon. During the hackathon participants were encouraged to meetup for real. We actually got on really well, and stayed friends and kept spitballing ideas for a startup for years.

At this time, I was a design student at Central Saint Martins and I had recently won a competition for Sony Music creating an interactive music video for the band Hurts with my friend Virgil. Then soon after graduation, I started working as a creative technologist in London for a bunch of different advertising & branding agencies and a few startups too.

My journey started after high school, in 2014 started in sales. Selling anything I could get my hands on for profit. I learned how to communicate, provide value to the marketplace, and achieve small wins. I had my ups and downs throughout the process which was tough and time-consuming. I then discovered the Kingdom and all it had to provide for me and those who believe and take action.

I began to study and slowly was changing my philosophy about life and meaning. I then go to know Jesus Christ and built a relationship in a short period of time and I was all uphill from there for me. I give all my credit to God because he gave me the idea to start documenting my experiences and applying these financial concepts to improve my financial situation and others. I had no background or expertise or any experience for that matter.

I have learned that starting a business in the 21st century the fastest way to gain authority over a specific topic or skill is to simply document your experience through video.

GoEdison was founded because my partner and I saw a major need in the small business realm for better marketing. This was at the time when marketing agencies were popping up everywhere and charging smaller businesses large retainers with getting them very little return.

Too often we want to get a little too creative with our new services. Do what works and do what’s simple when you first start out.

Three years prior I had launched two other smaller agencies get off the ground and make a ton of money. The problem was, I wasn’t truly invested in those companies. I was as a key employee, but nothing more than that. So instead of helping others get rich quickly, we knew we could provide a better service and overall client experience and make it our own thing versus working for someone else.

The database consulting was a natural progression from my day job. People were asking me for help on projects outside of my workday so the work fell into my lap. It was then that I realized I could turn this skill into something for real on the side.

Look at your business idea as a brick wall that needs to be built brick by brick. Don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of things that are involved in starting a business or side hustle. Instead just focus on the one brick in front of you. Go slow and steady. Be sure to add a new brick to that wall every single day.

At the time I started doing the side work I was in massive debt from school. I was already paying for my lifestyle through my regular job so I knew any income I earned on the side could go to directly paying off my student loans. It worked. I paid off my loans a few years ago and now have the flexibility to use my side income for other things.

When I tell my story I like to get into the details of how I landed where I currently am and where I am going. I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. I ended up in the United States after my father got a job offer for a marketing position at a semiconductor company, this was when I was only 10 years old. To be honest, the move definitely had an effect on me. When I lived in Mexico I was a fairly outgoing kid and (I believe) the move caused a shift that made me more of an introvert so you could say that was a bit against me, since I didn’t necessarily enjoy being the center of attention or being “noticed” too much for much of my upbringing. I finished high school and went to Arizona State University where I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Marketing alongside a certificate in entrepreneurship.

Right around the time of graduation from high school and the start of college I started a clothing line. I believe I was only 19 at the time and I didn’t have a budget to promote the new clothing line, so I turned to social media as my route to promote and sell the new products. I had to learn everything from Photoshop to constructing a website, content, photography, content distribution, supplier relationships, and many other skills. After seeing success marketing on social media, I quickly found that I was passionate about digital marketing. I then realized that there was a place where I could polish up my digital marketing skills, an agency, which to my surprise were not as concerned with academics as they were with real-world experience.

I went on to work for a marketing agency, after finally finding one was willing to overlook my lack of agency experience and realized that my entrepreneurial spirit and persistence would outweigh the need for the experience all the agencies were looking for. I was hungry. At this agency, I got hired on as a content writer (which I didn’t necessarily enjoy the most, but I knew I had to do it if I wanted to eventually lead the paid advertising department which was my goal). I was able to do just that within a year. I studied the ins and outs of the agency, how it operated, how it dealt with clients, how it made mistakes, and most importantly what helped it scale.

I was born and raised in Italy where, since I basically got out of school, I’ve been working as an electrical engineer for 9 years at an industrial automation company. During that time I was also playing in a punk rock band (name is “NeverAlone”, look it up, it’s great) and felt constricted in that job (that I also quite disliked).

The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll learn from your mistakes (‘cause there will be many of those). Learn from others who have done what you want to do and take massive action.

Hi, my name is Serban Enache and this story is about Stockfreeimages, a Royalty Free stock photo platform that was launched in 2012 as a free image resource. We started in 2000 with Dreamstime.com, one of today’s top 10 stock photo agencies globally and later on launched StockFreeImages as a spinoff for designers looking for free stock photos that are safe to use.

While Stockfreeimages offers unlimited free access to web size downloads, high-resolution downloads may require a small fee which allows us to reward the contributors. Unlike other free image resources, any charge for high-resolution downloads is fairly split with the content creators, as it should be.

In December 2020, the site had 1.3 million registered members and more than 2 million free stock images and illustrations from 56,303 photographers. We add fresh new titles every day and we have images for all needs and budgets, but mainly for free.

My name is Daryl Hatton. I am a founder, CEO, and lead investor of a team that created ConnectionPoint in 2009 as an early entrant and innovative pioneer in the crowdfunding industry.

To date, we have helped almost 200,000 projects in 40+ countries raise over $200 million using our platform.

Hello, my name is Nick Sfikas and I’m the owner of SFKshop, an eCommerce store that sells smart home appliances and garage door motors to individuals and other businesses throughout Greece. I am 21 years old and currently, I am a student at the Athens University of Economics and Business in the Department of Business Administration and Management.

The business has been turning over $17,000 a month in 2020 due to increased marketing efforts, word of mouth, and the impact of COVID-19. 2021 looks to be a breakout year with opportunities to turn SFKshop into an even larger player in the industry.

Hey! My name is Marti Sanchez and I am the CEO of Influence Podium. We help B2B CEOs get placed on podcasts their target audience listens to and repurposes those episodes into LinkedIn or Twitter content to grow their personal brand and drive inbound.

We just crossed $30k MRR and are looking to hit seven figures by the end of the year. We’re a young company in our 3rd year in business, and completely self-funded.

Hello, my name is Tim Sumer and I am the founder of Video Jaguar, AKA, The Easiest Way To Create Marketing Videos. Video Jaguar is an all-in-one video marketing software that provides a solution for both video production and social media marketing.

I launched the first version of Video Jaguar in August 2019. We did $25,038.74 in sales from August-December 2019, $188,672.22 in sales in 2020, and we are now doing $32,911.77/month in sales and are on track to do over $700K this year with roughly 75-85% bottom-line depending on our ad-spend.

G’day, folks! My name is Craig Barber, I’m the founder of Logobly.

My goal is to help as many entrepreneurs launch their business and make Logobly the #1 place for logo design.

Hi, I’m Mike Moloney, the founder of FilterGrade. FilterGrade is a marketplace for creators where you can find digital assets such as presets, LUTs, video templates, and much more.

Today thousands of creators from all around the world buy and sell digital products on FilterGrade and more than 450,000 users visit the site every month.

I’m Amanda Shepherd, the owner and lead mentor at the Social Media Manager Society. Aside from social media consulting to businesses in the food, beverage, and hospitality industries, I created a program to teach other women how to run successful social media businesses so they can have the time and financial freedom they’ve always wanted!

I quit my 9-5 and in one year made almost $100,000 working an average of four hours per day - and still growing!

My name is Tshepiso Leinane, a 24-year-old young man from Serowe, which is the second-largest village in the central district of Botswana.

Over 360 companies across the globe use our platform to recruit African talent, and yes, you could be next too.

My name is Ofer Tirosh and I am the founder and CEO of Tomedes. Tomedes is a translation services company that supports the global growth of our clients. We work with businesses around the world, from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Over the past 14 years, I’ve grown Tomedes from a one-person start-up to a global enterprise, but the business remains true to the principles on which I founded it. I’m really happy about that.

Today, we have over 100 team members spread across four continents, which allows us to serve a global audience. We’ve worked with over 90,000 business clients to date, while Tomedes’ revenue has grown year on year.

Hey, I’m Lacy and I’m a content strategist, author of the bestselling Kindle ebook Make a Killing With Content, and the Director of The Content Direction Agency. We specialize in done-for-you content strategy and writing retainers for the content between launches or promotions that helps businesses grow, nurture, and prime their audience to say “hell yes!” before they ever see the offer.

Over the past 9 years, we’ve helped hundreds of business owners create bespoke content strategies to consistently drive quality traffic to websites, increase monthly email leads by 300% or more, improve search engine rankings, enroll dozens of clients per month into membership programs, support multi-six figure launches, and drive millions of views of our articles.