All of the brilliant businesses seen on Fortune 100’s list all started with an innovative idea. Take a look at these businesses owned by successful entrepreneurs, and find out what inspired them to start their own business. Patreon is founded by Jack Conte and is an online membership platform. There are two target audiences for this website, “creators” and “patrons”. The website facilitates the platform in which creators can showcase their content, and also provides a way for patrons to pay for this content. Patrons have the ability to choose between paying a few dollars per month, or per post that the creator releases. Conte created Patreon as a platform that he himself needed. Prior to being the CEO, he was actually a musician and in a band, looking for new ways to showcase his content. As of May 2017, Patreon has over 50,000 active creators, 1 million monthly patrons, and is on track to spend over $150 million to creators in 2017. RigUp is founded by Xuan Yong and is an oil and gas technology startup. This company created a workforce bidding platform that bridges the communication and needs of engineers, business owners, and big oil companies. Yong started his career as an energy analyst and Goldman Sachs and saw how fragmented the oil industry was. RigUp was founded to be the “glue” that holds all of these moving parts together. So far, Yong’s venture is incredibly promising with $4.5 million in estimated revenue annually. His business has also been mentioned by Forbes, Fortune, and CNBC. Next Trucking is a company that features a woman CEO by the name of Lidia Yang, who co-founded the company alongside her husband Elton Chung. Next Trucking is a freight brokerage company, which seems incredibly niche, yet, has an important role in the process of trade. Unlike other freight brokerage companies, Next Trucking focuses on “drayage” which is essentially the complicated process of trade that involves the transportation of arriving goods to their respective warehouse. As of 2016, Next Trucking has doubled in revenue every year and has moved $50 Billion in cargo so far. The company is trusted by famous brands such as Hitachi, Kikkoman, and Steve Madden. Truepill is co-founded by Umar Afridi and Sid Viswanathan, and the main objective of this company is to revolutionalize the pharmaceutical industry by making it easier to access for consumers. The application programming interface (API) of this company allows customers to easily fill their prescriptions and be informed on the upfront costs that they should expect while doing so, something that is not always clear when you are filling a prescription the traditional method. Truepill works with major insurance companies and also offers clinical services to their customers too. Afridi himself was a pharmacist before starting the company, so he saw a need for a change in the industry and acted upon it. In 2018, its estimated revenue was 48 million. Remitly was founded by Shivaas Gulati, Josh Hug, Matthew Oppenheimer in 2011, and the objective of this company is to facilitate international money transfers. Remitly features an easy to use the website, low rates, and multiple ways to receive money. These methods include home delivery, direct deposit, cash pickup, and mobile money. Oppenheimer (CEO) once worked at Barclays in Kenya and saw how difficult it was to send and receive money, so he co-founded Remitly to be the solution to that problem. Their estimated 2018 revenue is $80 million. Redis Labs was founded by Ofer Bengal (CEO) and Yiftach Shoolman. It is a company that works with other major companies to provide NoSQL, a data compilation method that is much faster than traditional methods. Redis Labs initially hooked their customer base by providing a free open-source version, and in 2013, they introduced a $5 per month, per gigabyte paid version. This company is trusted by big names such as Dell, Microsoft, and Mastercard. Their estimated 2018 revenue is $50 million and has now raised $146 million in total funding so far. Proxy was founded by Denis Mars (CEO) and Simon Ratner and is working on a new way to access secured buildings and homes in an instant. Proxy is looking to “streamline” your experience when walking into buildings so you don’t have to fumble with an additional set of keys or an access card. Instead, your phone will be the key to unlock doors. Proxy is advertising its “frictionless” workplace to enterprise businesses, commercial property, small businesses, and multi-family residential buildings. They pride themselves on high-security measures and so far, have raised $13.6 million in Series A round funding. Lattice is a company founded by Jack Altman (CEO) and Eric Koslow. This company created human resource software that helps streamline performance management processes. This is a versatile tool that can practically be marketed to any company in order to help both the company and employee become more successful with the feedback generated. Prior to finding Lattice, the co-founders were working together in another company where they saw a huge disconnect with people management, so they created Lattice as a solution to that problem. Their estimated 2018 revenue is $7 million and the software is used by employers such as Instacart, Coinbase, and Slack (also, one of their investors). Kong was founded by Augusto Marietti (CEO) and Marco Palladino, and their objective is to connect API and microservices. They saw this need since we have multi-cloud environments, and they wanted to make the process more seamless. Their platform is currently being used by WeWork, Depop, and Yahoo! Japan. The investors backing this company include Jeff Bezos and Stanford University. Their estimated 2018 revenue is $5 million. SignalFx was co-founded by Phillip Liu and Karthik Rau (CEO) and is a company that created a Cloud Performance Monitoring Platform. Their uniqueness lies in the fact that they are the only company that is built on a streaming architecture. This means that they are able to allow their customers to analyze data the instant it is generated, for instant alerts, real-time dashboards, and robust automation. This rapid insight allows companies to quickly solve issues rather than wait for all of their users to report errors to the company or even worse, via social media platforms. Both of the co-founders have a background in tech and used their skills to create this software. Their estimated 2018 revenue was $15 million. As can be seen, these brilliant and innovative start-up ideas have gained traction and have the potential to change the world that we live in. You don’t necessarily need a background in entrepreneurship skills or tech to have the next million-dollar idea. All you need in order to get started is to identify a problem or mechanism that can be improved, and start pitching your idea to investors and creators that will help make your idea come to life. If you are inspired to create a business and hone in on your entrepreneurship side, please reach out to us at SDI! We pride ourselves on providing a personalized process with our clients through all stages of app development and success. SDI is an established firm that has worked with prominent clients such as Pepsi, Benefit Cosmetics, and Marvell. We have expert team members who are well equipped to execute ideas and handle tasks of all magnitudes. Don’t hesitate to call us at +1.408.621.8481 or email us at team@sdi.la and we will execute a non-disclosure agreement to protect your great idea and a free consultation.