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When Seth Berkowitz was a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, he started baking cookies for friends out of his dorm. Soon, he noticed a trend: students got hungry late at night and there wasn’t any delivery alternative to greasy and heavy food. Berkowitz wondered, “Why not hot cookies and milk – delivered to your door after midnight?”
When inventor Doug Vick got up in the middle of the night and bumped into the bedpost, he wondered, “How many other people do this every night?”
So he invented high-quality double-lined fleece slippers with a weight sensor in the sole, a light sensor on the side, and an LED light in the toe.
In the latest episode of the Why Didn’t I Think of That? ® Podcast, Bob Smith and Greg Anastos sit down with thinkofthat.net blogger Benjamin Christopher and discuss the first of their Axioms For Entrepreneurs, “Re-think Your Industry.”
The Why Guys explore how companies like Netflix, Apple, Xerox, and General Motors were able to look at their industries, and their companies, in a new light.
Richard James was working at a Philadelphia shipyard and was looking for a way to keep nautical instruments stable in rough seas. That’s when a torsion spring fell off the shelf. Richard watched the spring crawl down shelves, stacks of books and tabletops, and land upright on the floor. Suddenly, he had a great idea…
Why do candles all have such “girly smells,” 14-year-old Hart Main asked his younger sister, who was selling the candles for a school fundraiser. Main thought why not have smells that guys would like, like fresh cut grass, bacon, sawdust and leather. So, with a $100 investment, and his heart set on buying a brand new bike, this young man invented a whole new kind of candle: the ManCan.
What they do:
Market a musical instrument application for the Apple I-phone.
Inspiration:
At the suggestion of his friend Jeff Smith, Ge Wang, an assistant professor of computer music at Stanford University, created a musical application for Apple's i-Phone.
About the business:
Wang and Smith created "Smule," short for Sonic Mule. Their first application, Ocarina -- named for an ancient flute like instrument -- lets you blow into an i-Phone microphone while pressing buttons to create music. The 99-cent virtual flute became the best-selling app in over 10 countries, pulling in a half million dollars in its first six months.
When 28 year old entrepreneur Patrick Buckley heard that his family and friends were reluctant to switch over to an e-reader because they strongly preferred the sensation of holding a book, he had a great idea. He created the DODOcase, an e-readers, tablets, and phones, manufactured using traditional bookbinding methods.
Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos says that they’re “the only tech company with low margins.”
Low margins is an understatement. The company is losing money on every single Kindle Fire tablet they sell. But it’s all part of Jeff Bezos plan to conquer the Universe. He may or may not succeed, but one thing’s clear: With the Kindle Fire, he has single-handedly created a low-end tablet market where there was none, and for that reason alone, he’s about to change the tech industry forever.
What is success? The founders of start-ups might have a very different answer than the rest of us. For some, success would be landing on the cover of Fortune or Forbes Magazine. For others, having their product become a household name would be success.
For new start-ups, it’s a lot more fundamental than that: Swim. Don’t Sink.
