The next generation is pretty dumb alright.
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/09/0923_young_entrepreneurs/1.htm
Forever Lazy
What it does: Sells one-piece pajamas for adults
Founders: Tyler Galganski, 25, and Dave Hibler, 25
Website: foreverlazy.com
Based: Brookfield, Wisc.
When Tyler Galganski ordered himself a pair of one-piece pajamas in early 2009, he was disappointed with the quality. He and his best childhood friend Dave Hibler thought they could make a better product. They started their company, Forever Lazy, when the Snuggie was the latest fad and they spotted an opportunity to sell comfortable sleepwear for adults. The pair left their jobs—Galganski was a business analyst at Kohl's (
KSS) and Hibler managed a
General Nutrition Center in Chicago—and launched Forever Lazy, initially with a small run of 600 pajamas made by a garment industry veteran in San Francisco. The pajamas were a hit as a novelty item. By January they were on the Today Show and In Touch Weekly—publicity that caught the pair off-guard and short of inventory just after the Christmas season. While they anticipated most of the interest would come from college students, the product has also been adopted by elderly customers, hospital patients, and campers looking for comfortable sleepwear. Galganski and Hibler moved production from San Francisco to China this year to manufacture larger runs; the pajamas now retail from $45 to $50. The pair say they sold $36,000 worth in four months of operating in 2009 and they project $496,000 for 2010. —JT
9 Clouds
What it does: Online marketing
Founder: John T. Meyer, 25
Website: 9cloudsinc.com
Based: Sioux Falls, S.D.
Meyer started his first company to do search engine marketing at age 22 from his dorm room at Luther College in Iowa. After going to work for Accenture (
ACN) in Minneapolis, he took a buyout in 2009 to return to his native South Dakota and start 9 Clouds, an online marketing consultancy. Meyer's goal: help organizations that aren’t very Web savvy get online. "Especially here in the Midwest, there’s a lot of people who need the help," he says. Meyer used a $15,000 economic development grant for seed money and launched the company in June 2009. Two months later, he hired his brother Scott, 28, to lead sales. 9 Clouds now has a staff of five, an office in Sioux Falls, and more than a dozen active clients, including retailers, professional firms, and colleges such as South Dakota State University and Lehigh University. Meyer says the business had $50,000 in revenue in the second half of 2009 and he expects $200,000 in 2010. —JT
Campus Buddy
What it does: Publishes data on college class grading
Founder: Mike Moradian, 25
Website: campusbuddy.com
Based: Los Angeles
After experiencing a particularly rough time in a calculus class during his sophomore year at UCLA, Mike Moradian began to think students could benefit from knowing more about how professors grade. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the business economics major got information about grade distributions at classes at the public university. That data became the basis for CampusBuddy, the business he launched in February 2008. Moradian aggregated public data on grade distributions for classes, professors, and majors at 250 public colleges, starting with the University of California system. The service has 280,000 active monthly users out of the nearly 1 million people who have joined, most through its
Facebook app. Moradian says a "small percentage" of active users pay $1.50 monthly for access to detailed grading data. The site also makes money by referring students to such services as textbook sellers and moving companies and through advertising. CampusBuddy employs 100 interns who work remotely for school credit and maintains a staff of five at its Beverly Hills office. Moradian says the company had $60,000 in revenue in 2009 and projects $400,000 this year. —JT
Innova Dynamics
What it does: Advanced materials engineering
Founder: Alexander Mittal, 25; Arjun Srinivas, 25; Michael Young, 24
Website: innovadynamics.com
Based: San Francisco
Alexander Mittal developed a process for imbuing plastics and polymers with new properties while pursuing a dual major in engineering and economics at the University of Pennsylvania. In his 2006 thesis project, he used that technique to create water pipes that would repel microbes in remote Honduran villages, making drinking water safer. He and his co-founders Arjun Srinivas and Michael Young founded a company, now called Innova Dynamics, in 2008 to commercialize the technique, which he says can be used to improve or develop products in a range of industries. "We have figured out a way to take microparticles and nanoparticles and physically embed them into the surfaces of materials," he says. "We have a true platform technology." Innova's process, which the company calls Innlay, has been used to create antimicrobial surfaces for hospitals, including floors and phones. Mittal says the company is working on changing the properties of solar panels to make them more efficient. Clients include the U.S. Army, DuPont (
DD), and PPG (
PPG). Innova, which has 10 employees, raised $5.5 million in venture capital in May, and recently relocated from Philadelphia to San Francisco. Mittal says revenue in 2009 was in the "low six figures" and this year he projects over $1 million. —JT
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/09/0923_young_entrepreneurs/1.htm
