If you want to build a good business, you need to solve a good problem. Every brand-name business you can name has solved a problem for consumers. Netflix created a way to rent any movie you wanted without late fees, Shazam helped you find the name of that song you heard in the grocery store, and Waze helped you find the traffic hot spots.
At BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, we work with some of the top speakers who are also startup founders. These entrepreneurs have been able to identify problems for consumers and provide solutions that led to multi-million and multi-billion dollar companies. Learn more about how you can be a great startup from these speakers.
Apple
In 1976, Apple computer was started in a garage in Los Altos, California, by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. They wanted to make computers anybody could use. The philosophy of making easy-to-use products continues to this day. Now the company is worth around a trillion dollars, and you either own one of its products or know someone who does.
FUBU
In 1992, Daymond John co-founded FUBU (For Us By Us) as a company with the idea of making sportswear made by the same people who wore it. Daymond John mortgaged his home for $100,000 to turn half of his house into a clothing factory. The company is now a 6 billion dollar success story.
Marquis Jet and Zico Coconut Water
In 2001, Jesse Itzler thought flying on private jets was nice but too expensive for most to enjoy. And most of the time, private jets sit around without being used. So he founded Marquis Jet, which allowed people to buy a 25-hour jet card so they could use private jets. Over ten years, the company did over $5 billion in business and later sold to NetJets. Then in 2004, Jesse thought coconut water was great to drink but difficult for everyone to access. So he created Zico Coconut Water, which was later sold to Coca-Cola.
Netflix
In 1997, Marc Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix, thought, “What if you could rent DVDs by mail? Wouldn’t that be more convenient for everyone than going to Blockbuster?” By creating a large catalog of DVDs, eliminating late fees, and allowing people to keep movies as long as they liked, the company disrupted Blockbuster. Now Netflix is the king of streaming media and worth over $100 billion.
Shazam
In 2002, Chris Barton, the co-founder of Shazam, thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could use your phone to figure out any song you heard playing?” However, to accomplish that, he and his team had to develop new software to identify songs in any situation and create a database of songs. The company really took off with the development of the iPhone in 2008. However, it wasn’t until 2017 that Apple acquired Shazam’s technology for $400 million. Today, Shazam connects more than 1 billion users.
Siri
Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus tackled the problem of how to make our life more hands-free. What if we could just talk to our phones and devices instead of having to type things in? In 2010, they launched their virtual voice assistant Siri app in the Apple store. The app was so impressive that Steve Jobs called them and bought the company for $200 million and placed Siri on all Apple products. The two later went on to develop the virtual voice assistant Viv, which became Bixby on Samsung phones.
Skinnygirl Cocktails
In 2009, Bethenny Frankel founded Skinnygirl Cocktails on the notion that women would love a low-calorie, great-tasting margarita. She single-handedly created the low-calorie cocktail category for the beverage industry. In 2011, she sold Skinnygirl for $100 million to Beam Suntory.
Spanx
Sara Blakely just wanted to look nice. However, she couldn’t find any footless body-shaping pantyhose to go with her outfit. It turned out that body-shaping products were being designed by men, not women. Frustrated, Blakely took $5,000 in savings to develop Spanx—a slimming garment that minimized figure flaws—reinventing shapewear for women and creating a billion-dollar company.
Waze
What if you could know about traffic conditions before you left on your trip? Uri Levin just wanted to be able to know where the traffic was so he could choose the best route to get home. So in 2007, he co-founded the Waze app, which crowdsourced driver data from GPS positioning to create maps and share traffic conditions. It became so successful the driving app was acquired by Google in 2013 for $1.1 billion and now has more than 750 million users around the globe.
This article was originally posted by BigSpeak Feb 24, 2023.
