Top 5 Successful Startups Launched by College Students

We live in a unique world filled with opportunities. Everyone can launch a company and build a business out of an idea they are passionate about.

 

Although a large bunch of creative startup ideas has been generated in college (just think of Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook idea or Paymyessaywriter.com by a group of students from Australia), most of the innovative students still need a college degree as a backup plan for the future. No one knows how the startup will turn out, yet here are a few essentials to keep in mind if you are launching the project in college: 

 

  • Plan your expenditures and set realistic deadlines;
  • Mind social presence, be active with the media channels;
  • Do not underestimate the power of networking;
  • Take care of your degree, even if it doesn’t seem necessary.

 

Let us concentrate on the last tip. Even if you don’t have enough time to write each and every lab report, this is not the reason to throw away a chance of getting the degree. That being said, there are plenty of online companies where you can turn with the request like write my essay online for cheap and get the best result possible in no time. Make your life in college easier and get the best out of it.

 

Yes, college can become a perfect starting point for a successful business. Look at these five now-famous companies which were launched by college students.

 

source: https://unsplash.com/photos/3fPXt37X6UQ

Verb Energy

 

Every college student must have had this feeling: an urgent need of another cup of coffee not to fall asleep in front of the books or a laptop. Still, coffee is not the healthiest option as its overuse may disrupt sleep and increase blood pressure.

 

Plus, continuous paying for coffee can take a toll on students’ budgets, especially when coupling it with a snack. So Matt Czarnecki, André Monteiro, and Bennett Byerley, who at that time studied at Yale University, decided to come up with a healthier and more thrifty alternative. 

 

That is how Verb Energy startup was born. Launched in late 2016, it offers healthy bars that combine granola and healthy caffeine derived from green tea. Since 2016, Verb Energy made an impressive rise and recently raised $3.5 million to expand the business even further.

 

Snapchat

 

It is hard to find a teenager who has never heard about Snapchat. Launched in 2011, it became crazy popular and now is considered as the main rival of Facebook and Instagram.

 

The most inspiring part? Snapchat was launched by two Stanford students, Evan Spiegel, and Bobby Murphy. Firstly, they created an app called Picaboo. Its main goal was to enable users to send photos which will eventually vanish.

 

But after launching Picaboo Spiegel and Murphy ran into a problem: screenshots. Users were still able to take screenshots and it pretty much ruined all the point of Picaboo. So, the founders came up with a solution and developed a feature that notified users if their photo was screenshotted. At the same time, Picaboo became Snapchat.

 

Now Snapchat is a widely popular app, and its founders, Evan Spiegel, and Bobby Murphy became billionaires. 

 

Squarespace

 

Squarespace is a popular platform that allows creating a personal website, portfolio, or even an online store. Now it is a successful business that brings its founder, Anthony Casalena, millions of dollars. The project was launched in Anthony’s dorm room at the University of Maryland.

 

In 2003, Anthony started working on this project because he wanted to build a better professional website for himself. But pretty soon, Casalena began to share the platform with his relatives and friends. Eventually, he realized that this opportunity could be scaled up — and oh boy, was he right.

 

Now Squarespace has three offices: in New York City, Portland, and Dublin. It employs 980 workers, and millions of sites were created using the platform.

 

Reddit

 

It is hard to find someone who has not heard of “the front page of the Internet” aka Reddit. It is also one of the biggest websites in the world, with probably the most loyal audiences. 

 

Reddit was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. Both of them were University of Virginia graduates. They started the project by simply submitting links using fake accounts. Not very noble, but soon, Reddit started to become more and more popular. 

 

In 2006, just a year after Reddit was founded, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian sold it to Conde Nast, a renowned media company. In April 2019 Reddit had an impressive number of almost 1.6 billion visits

 

Brex

 

Brex is a fin-tech startup that creates personalized credit cards for — try to guess — other startups. It shows impressive growth — founded just two years ago, Brex now has a $2.6 billion valuation.

 

But who founded Brex? Well, by now, you can surely guess that two students launched Brex. Namely Pedro Franceschi and Henrique Dubugras. Both of them are from Brasil; both studied at Stanford and both… dropped out of it to start working on Brex. 

 

Considering the success of this startup, leaving Stanford was probably a good decision. After all, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg also went down this path and achieved tremendous success. 

 

Final Words

 

All these stories are very different. Still, they are inspiring and remind us that the startup world is open for anybody, even for seemingly inexperienced college students. The most important thing here is to be determined, hard-working, and really believe in the idea. That is how successful startups are born. 

All successful start ups keep their records up to date so they can monitor their cash flow during the early stages. 3 in 4 startups who do not monitor cash flow fail whilst 3 in 4 who do monitor their cash flow succeed. Check the cost of an accountant to find an affordable accountant who offers the right service.

 

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