5 Disruptive Entrepreneurs to Learn From

We live in a time where nearly everyone is an entrepreneur – or thinks they are. Until recently, when we thought about the word entrepreneur we thought about the rare person. Our minds envisioned someone with incredible guts and foresight. They were the people able to take risks on new ideas and turn them into a profitable business. They were the rare and disruptive entrepreneurs who changed the world. But today it’s different thanks to the web. Through the internet, it is possible to make almost anything and to market to almost anyone. Through our virtual world, a single person can start a viral movement. Other technologies make it possible to invent more and exciting things. As invention begets invention, we hurtle toward the singularity. But today it is more possible than ever to change the world with an idea. So, who are some of the most inspiring, world changing, disruptive entrepreneurs right now? Let’s take a look…

5 Disruptive Entrepreneurs

Mark Zuckerberg One might think of Facebook as a simple social network but in reality, it is much more. Facebook changed the way people interact with each other. It causes massive political shifts – some argue it triggered the Arab Spring. All this was the result of some code that a Harvard student wrote in his dorm room! Matt Mullenweg If you don’t read my blog, you may not know him, but Matt Mullenweg is no less important. Matt is the entrepreneur behind WordPress. The idea was simple: write a piece of software to ‘productize’ his web design service. The result? A platform that serves as the foundation for 25% of the entire internet! Elon Musk If you haven’t heard of Elon Musk, you must be living under a rock. Musk has created countless disruptive technologies and doesn’t appear to be slowing down. You know this incredible man as the founder of SpaceX, Tesla Motors. With these disruptive businesses, he seeks to privatize space travel and end our reliance on fossil fuels. What you might not know is that Musk also founded a company called X.com. This online financial services company led to the creation of PayPal! Before that, he built an online city guide called Zip2, which he sold to Compaq for millions of dollars. Steve Jobs It’s hard to talk about disruptive entrepreneurs without mentioning Steve Jobs. Do you remember flip phones? How about Blackberry’s? Imagine the smartphone today without Steve Jobs. Would we even have smartphones? Perhaps, but would they be what they are today? Steve Jobs propelled us into a world much different than the one we remember with the flip phone. Consider the music industry. Steve wasn’t the first one to think of digitizing music into a portable device, but he is the one that transformed the music industry. We now consume our entertainment in a completely different way than we did 10 years ago. For instance, no more CDs or CD holders hanging from the visors of our cars. Palmer Luckey Palmer Luckey is the newest disruptive entrepreneur on the list, but his place here is well earned. He started toying around with virtual reality headsets as a hobby. He eventually launched Oculus Rift on Kickstarter to immense success. His company is now poised to transform the world and has spawned an entire industry. The social driven, data deep world we live in made the achievements of these entrepreneurs possible. The same social driven, data deep world is available to you. How will you change the world?