Rob Fishman Has Found His Niche

In business, finding your niche can be challenging yet rewarding. Rob Fishman has discovered his Niche and has found it be rewarding, indeed.

Fishman co-founded Niche with Darren Lachtman in June 2013 although the duo only offered their services to the general public in November 2013. Niche has an innovative concept: To connect social media celebrities, such as Nash Grier, with big brands. It provides free analytics for social media creators, thus, allowing them to determine what is and isn’t working.

Its first client, CBS Films, teamed with 9 social media stars including Curtis Lepore who has nearly 4 million Vine followers. Niche flew the party to Las Vegas to produce and cover a Vine video about the movie premiere of Las Vegas.

Nowadays, Niche has 34 employees based in its New York and San Francisco offices. It now boasts of over 5,000 creators in 16 social media sites including Vine, Tumblr, Instagram, and Snapchat. It has a strong business relationship with Hewlett-Packard, among others.

It has been acquired by Twitter, a move announced in February 2013. The company’s post-acquisition plans include continuing its commitment to its creators in terms of more platforms, more tools, and more opportunities.

As co-founder, Fishman has been instrumental in raising seed funding from various sources. Together with Lachtman and Bason, he has raised $550,000 in seed funding from David Tisch of Box Group, Chris Altchek of PolicyMic, Michael Kassan and John Alderman of MediaLink, and Bryan Goldberg of Bleacher Report.

Fishman is not a business newbie and a digital greenhorn either, as evidenced by his lengthy resume. He is a senior product manager (February 2015-present) at Twitter. He was also a contributing editor at BuzzFeed (December 2012-August 2013); a co-founder of Kingfish Labs, Inc. (June 2011-September2012); a senior editor for social media at AOL (February-May 2011); and a social media editor for The Huffington Post (August 2009-May 2011).

George Bousis: Making Gift Cards Mobile

George Bousis, founder of Raise, a mobile application that allows you to purchase gift cards at a discounted price, is making waves in the consumer technology industry. This innovative app has earned him a slot on the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology list for 2015.

Bousis earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business/Managerial Economics – Political Science at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois in 2010. He founded Raise and has served as the company’s CEO since February 2013.

Consumers can download the application onto their mobile devices and browse through the marketplace for discounted gift cards for a wide variety of retailers ranging from small scale to big names in the retail industry. They can use the gift cards in-store or online. Users can also sell unwanted gift cards in the Raise marketplace. The company’s success has attracted major investors as it just received $18 million last year from Bessemer Venture Partners.

James Beshara Introduces a New Way to Raise Funds

The term “crowdsourcing” has become very popular in recent years with individuals and companies generating and collecting ideas that the general public have come up with. James Beshara, an entrepreneur with a flair for innovation, took the idea to a whole new level with his company Tilt (formerly known as CrowdTilt).

Beshara graduated from Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 2008 with a degree in Economics. He later went on to work in South Africa as a microloans collection officer. It was during this time that he came up with the idea to use social collateral to fund loans to micro-insurance organizations in South Africa. He founded Tilt’s predecessor, a company named Dvelo.org which provided group-funded loans and raise money for non-profit organizations. Dvelo became very popular among its users and soon people started using the site to raise funds for non-charity related projects. Beshara went with the flow and shifted the company’s business model to accommodate fund raising activities for a wide variety of events, as well as for non-profit organizations and businesses.

In 2011, he invited Khaled Hussein to the team and rebranded Dvelo into what is now known as Tilt. They joined Y Combinator’s Winter Session in 2012, and the rest, as they say, is history. The success of Tilt has brought the spotlight upon Beshara. He has earned recognition from many business, media, and technology institutions , the most recent being having his name included in the Forbes’ 2015 list of 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology.

Tilt is now expanding its reach. The company now has offices in both the United States and Canada and is planning to expand globally. The success of the company can be attributed not only to the solid idea presented by Beshara, but by the enthusiasm its users have for helping other people with their causes and projects.

Jacob Bank: Reinventing the Digital Assistant

Jacob Bank graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Cornell University. He took a leave of absence from Stanford University where he was working on getting his PhD in Computer Science. In the PhD program, Bank’s research revolved around the best application of data mining, optimization algorithms, and machine learning in time management.

His studies in time management led him to develop Timeful, a comprehensive, all-in-one digital assistant application that not only helps people manage their time wisely by scheduling them in the app’s calendar, it also suggests when to schedule certain activities and helps users set habits. Bank co-founded the company with Yoav Shoham in 2013 and has since raised almost $7 million in investments.

Before co-founding Timeful, Bank interned at LinkedIn in the data science department, as well as at Google in the engineering department. Bank also practices what he preaches as he rarely has problems with scheduling his busy day.

Allan Schaaf: Redefining Image Hosting

As an avid Reddit user, Alan Schaaf, a college student taking up Computer Science at Ohio University, found it difficult to post or view images on the site through the image hosting sites that were available at that time. This inspired him to create his own image uploader during his spare time. In 2009, he launched Imgur which became an instant hit when he shared it with other people on Reddit.

Schaaf continued working on the site on his own as he worked his way towards a college degree. The uploader he created had become so popular that Schaaf had to switch hosting providers in order to accommodate the growth in its audience base and bandwidth used by the image hosting site’s users. In the early stages of Imgur, Schaaf relied on donations by the site’s users in order to keep the site up and running. As the site’s audience grew, he knew it wasn’t enough. This is why Schaaf also decided to increase the site’s revenue by allowing display ads and sponsored images on the site. By 2011, Schaaf took his dorm-room company and moved it to San Francisco. He began hiring employees and by 2013 the company had 10 people on its staff. Schaaf funded the company on his own and did not rely on investors in order to continue operating. This was why TechCrunch named Imgur as the Best Bootstrapped Startup during the 2012 Crunchies Awards.

Today, Schaaf no longer needs to fund his company using revenues from display ads as the company had just received a $40 million investment from Andreessen Horrowitz in 2014. Schaaf is taking his vision of creating a user-friendly image hosting service for Reddit users has now blossomed into a whole new entity. Aside from just hosting images, Imgur has also integrated a host of different services that has left users hooked on the site.

Neil Parikh Co-initiates a Revolution in Mattresses

Neil Parikh is an overachiever who currently wants to change the way consumers buy their mattresses. He is a serial entrepreneur whose string of business ventures have prepared him for the risks and rewards of hitting the big time with Casper.

Parikh co-founded Casper, a mattress company that ships high-quality yet reasonably-priced mattresses direct to consumers; the mattresses are manufactured with proprietary sleep technology. Since January 2014, he has served as the chief operating officer for the company, which has garnered approximately $15 million – and counting - in venture funding.

He has also either founded or co-founded several other business ventures. In July 2012, he founded Consignd, a company that allows content publishers to sell their content directly from brands. In May 2010, he also co-founded WaterWalla, a company that helps people living in urban slums to have access to clean potable water technologies via innovative retail models.

Parikh has also worked as an organizer at TEDxCollegeHill, as a consumer engagement professional at CVS Caremark Corporation, and as Vice President for Product Development at HygeaShare, among others. But why stop there? He also wants to join a non-profit board and take on pro bono consulting.

Olga Vidisheva Provides Shops With an Online Presence

Olga Vidisheva only had a strong vision – to provide women with immediate access to stylish boutiques around the world while also bringing them the intimate experience of browsing through curated pieces online – when she started Shoptiques.com. But the driven entrepreneur has transformed her strong vision into a strong platform for over 1, 200 stores - and counting – to sell their one-of-a-kind pieces online.

Vidisheva, a former model and Harvard Business School alumna, founded Shoptiques.com as a website that showcases and sells the curated items of local boutiques. She envisions 2015 as her business hyper-growth phase and her clients are in for the ride!

Upon her completion of her Bachelor of Arts in Economics with a minor in Mathematics from Wellesley College, Vidisheva woked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. for the next two years. But she soon realized that her interests were not in finance so she enrolled at Harvard Business School. She went on to become the Co-President of the Retail & Luxury Goods Club and an intern at Chanel’s Fashion and Fragrance and Beauty marketing divisions.

Her idea for Shoptiques.com came when her friends wanted to buy a pair of shoes she purchased in Paris but were unable to do so; the boutique owner wanted the buyers to come to her shop instead of sending the goods to them. Vidisheva wanted to provide small-scale boutique businesses with a digital platform, thus, allowing them to maintain a competitive online presence. She wanted to give these businesses a strong online platform to show off and sell their high-end items in the United States and several other countries.



She raised the funds for her business from various venture capital firms, such as Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and SV Angel.



Vidisheva launched Shoptique.com with just 50 stores on the Shoptique.com platform. In less than a year, the website was being mentioned in major shows and newspapers across the United States. The site earns income via humble and reasonable commissions on the sales of the curated items.

Rafael Corrales: Helping Entrepreneurs Navigate through Their Startup Journey

Aside from making money from investments, many entrepreneurs who have turned into venture capital partners invest in promising startups in order to help them succeed the same way someone helped them when they first started out. Rafael Corrales, a native of Venezuela, is doing the same thing.

Corrales earned his Bachelor’s Degree at Georgia Tech and then went on to get an MBA from Harvard Business School. His entrepreneurial journey began when he co-founded LearnBoost, a web-based software platform for teachers. Before starting up his own business, Corrales worked in sales, marketing, and business development at RentJuice, sales consulting at HubSpot and as a mergers and acquisitions analyst at Xerox.

Corrales was able to use his vast experience in business when he joined Charles River Ventures in 2013. He was recently promoted to partner and is interested in early-stage companies in marketplaces, consumer mobile, hardware, and Bitcoin. He also has personal investments in several companies including Luxe, Blockchain, and Instacart.