Inspiring Entrepreneurs: Men

While male entrepreneurs may have some advantages other their female counterparts, it doesn’t mean that success is assured. To start a successful business, you have to come up with a great idea; that’s Entrepreneurship 101, right?  As you might guess, it’s often easier said than done. What do you do if you can’t come up with something original?  What if someone else already had the great idea you wish YOU had?  One way is to make that great idea better. 

Being an entrepreneur means you have to adapt. In Dan Hermann’s case it meant taking an existing idea out for a new spin. Hermann and his friend Sean McGrail helped turn paint night, or Paint Nite, into a national phenomenon. They weren’t the first to come up with organized painting and drinking parties. Far from it. But instead of using the franchise models that others used, they instead licensed artists. For a cut of the ticket price, artists would book the venues, create the pictures and oversee the events. By 2015 Paint Nite was operating in 115 cities around the world. 

Nate Martin helped create the escape room as we know it. If you’re not familiar with an escape room, it’s an interactive way for groups to solve puzzles and use teamwork to find their way out of a locked room, usually in less than one hour. If it sounds like a cross between Tomb Raider and an amusement park ride, it’s because that’s exactly what it is. Of course, Martin didn’t invent the escape room any more than Indiana Jones invented pit traps and falling boulders. The inspiration for his company Puzzle Break came from the well-trodden world of video games, allowing players to be a sort of real-life Lara Croft. Variations of the escape room can be found all over the world, and it all started with Martin’s $7,000 startup.

However you feel about the legality of cannabis, there’s no denying that people have been using it in one form or another for millennia. Needless to say, Franco Brockelman, CEO of Releaf App, was hardly the first on the scene. Brockelman’s innovation came with the advent of medical marijuana. There were all sorts of strains with different properties, and patients had no way of knowing which variety would best suit their needs. Enter the Releaf App, an easily-accessible mobile app that lets medical marijuana users to track the effects of different medications, including how patients are affected, the relief it provides for various ailments and the side effects. With over 150 reviews, Brockelman and his team’s creation currently enjoys a 4.7 rating on the Apple store.

Finding success is tough no matter who you are. There are times the great ideas just seem to come to someone else. It happens, and it doesn’t mean you have to let go of your dream. As the stories above show, the road to success isn’t always through a brilliant idea. Sometimes it’s finding that brilliant idea and making it better.