The Top Five Entrepreneurs of 2011

The top five entrepreneurs of 2011 truly demonstrated their ability to start profitable and sustainable businesses. The top five businesses and entrepreneurial founders are as follows:


cc licensed flickr photo shared by techatnyu


1. Rohit Arora: Biz2Credit


Rohit Arora, founder of Biz2Credit, capitalized on the banks’ ability to develop profitable portfolios with small business loans. He also noticed that ethnic-owned firms had the least defaults and used this information to develop his business model. Since immigrants’ largest impediment to getting loans in the United States was a result of lack of understanding, Biz2Credit developed an immigrant-friendly online application process for commercial loans and credit reports.

Once credit scores are determined, immigrants are matched with three to 10 potential lenders. Financial documents can be stored online until a loan is granted or denied. The process is streamlined and innovative. Immigrants can build their business credit and expand their businesses with these opportunities.
To date, this Manhattan firm has facilitated a total of $400 million in loans. The loan amounts are typically
between $200,000 and $4.5 million. Fifty-five percent of the Biz2Credit’s customers are immigrants.


2. Anthony Casalena: SquareSpace


Squarespace developed from Anthony Casalena’s frustration of integrating photos, analytics and blogging tools. He developed a publishing platform to solve the problem. The software integrates websites, Flickr and Twitter easily. He used a $30,000 investment to buy servers to support his platform.
The platform costs between $12 and $36 per month and supports clients such as Kiehl’s, a cosmetic retailers and Marc Ecko Enterprises, a fashion firm. In 2010, the company reported sales of as much as $10.2 million.

3. Michael Dorf: City Winery


City Winery founder, Michael Dorf, addresses the need of winemakers who need fresh grapes from California, Oregon or Chile vineyards. The company also hosts concerts, wine tastings and sells wine by the glass. The event space is used for wedding receptions and private parties. The main portion of his business sells memberships to produce wine for companies. In 2011, Dorf expected to produce $10 million in revenue.


4. Karen Grando: International Asbestos Removal

International Asbestos Removal founder, Karen Grando, went into the asbestos-removal field after hearing her husband repeatedly turn down clients requesting the service. She enrolled in a training program to earn city and state licenses to perform this trade. She has won contracts with Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Dormitory Authority of the State of New York and the School Construction Authority. In 2010, the firm had revenue of $10 million.

5. Michael Kirban: Vita Coco


Vita Coco was started by Michael Kirban and Ira Liran after over-hearing a conversation about coconut water from two Brazilian ladies. The founders felt coconut water could be as profitable as orange juice. The two guys used $100,000 of their own savings to start manufacturing in Brazil. The popular drink made its debut in Whole Foods in New York. Vita Coco is also sold at many Walmart and Costco locations.
Demi Moore and Matthew McConaughey both invested in the popular drink. Celebrities have donated over $10 million for its development. The business growth was only limited by the number of coconuts it could obtain. Last year, the company managed nearly $80 million in sales. The company is also charitable and donated $2 million to the American Heart Association, Special Olympics and other charities.

Guest Post: Robert Kurtz is a career consultant and contributor for Top Business Degrees, a site with detailed information, reviews and guides about online business degrees.

Entrepreneurship : Many Times All is Not well At the Very First Go

Today I just came across this video and hence thought of sharing some past nuances about WebPro Technologies

Every entrepreneur starts a business venture with a dream of being successful  but many times all is not well  at the very first go. When you decide to take up a job you learn on the job and try to be better with every passing day gaining experience and knowledge and also you are assured of a pay packet at the end of the month.

But, when you venture out to invest in business you do get experience with every decision you take but you may not always end up with monetary gain at the very first go. So that is the difference one needs to take risks and also be prepared for unforeseen situations  or vagaries of the market despite  taking  wise and careful decisions. Always have   a backup plan ready for such situations.

I am not writing all this hypothetically, I have gone through these situations and experienced it .   I have been on both the sides . I started my career in 1987 working as a faculty at DataPro (Mumbai –Bandra) , Placement Head at  NIIT  (New Delhi ) and then  finally as Centre Manager at TuLec (A division Of Tata Infotech – Ahmedabad) . After that planned to take up a franchise of DataPro for Ahmedabad but after a good start due to the changing market conditions as we are all familiar with the dot com bubble burst period of early 2000 it became very difficult to survive and meet the salary expenses of the SCJPs and MCSEs and the huge infrastructure cost of running a training institute .

But we had to continue even at a loss as we had enrolled students for 3 year Diploma  courses and had to keep up to our commitments . The  final blow came when DataPro – the Parent Company announced its closure and we had to now create an identity of our own. We had to remove the DataPro Sign Board  and decided to start under the name of WebPro Technologies. Designing our own courses and setting marketing plans.

We started with Web Designing and Web Development courses and also got projects for web development.After the initial hiccups and teething problems we managed to get out of the loss and actually reached a decent profit margin with the web development and web designing courses we started for B.E’s  (Engineers) only and we tiled the course as 'The eEngineer' . The first few batches were the saving grace and we came out of the difficult times.

The website owners whose website we had developed wanted to know how they can rank on Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo, Hotbot,etc. the search engines which were widely used. I  started working on that and since then I have never looked back . I personally got so interested in optimizing sites that SEO services became the focus of our company.

Once you are out of the difficult times then it is in your hands to restructure, reorganize and rework the entire set up to narrow down or expand and go ahead more confidently.

Hence, every business venture will have its ups and downs but only during these times the entrepreneur has to prove his/her mettle and  integrity as these are the true testing times  and many times you are left alone to face these situations or the most faithful few of your team may help you.