These 8 founders prove you don’t need to be technical to begin a tech company that is successful

Pandora: Tim Westergren

Pandora Web Radio started off of the songs Genome venture, a committed concept to recognize the numerous, numerous faculties of music making sure that individuals could produce customized stereo with all the music they liked and absolutely nothing they don’t really. Whenever purchasers like Barnes and Noble and Tower reports passed regarding the technology, Pandora went into company being a radio section for it self.

Tim Westergren ended up being expected to the musical third of the original three-man team, but remained because of the business and finished up as CEO. Today, Pandora has 81 million users and $900 million in yearly income.

Cracked: AJ Forsythe

AJ Forsythe began iCracked, an iPhone fix service, from their university dorm space at California Polytechnic State University. He taught himself how exactly to fix their own phone using components purchased from Chinese ecommerce site Alibaba, and decided it had the makings of the solid company. He’d their frat brothers help promote the first form of iCracked with leaflets built in MS Paint, together with remainder is history.

Today, iCracked delivers one of their 1,600 certified “iTechs” around the world right to customers on need to assist them to fix their phones for a set $100. Interestingly, iCracked provides none of this cash from the techs — they simply offer them the components to complete the fixing. It is working, too, as iCracked boasts so it makes $25 million in yearly revenue.

Coffee Meets Bagel: Arum, Dawoon, and Soo Kang

The Kang sisters — Arum, Dawoon, and Soo— decided to together start a company last year after Arum completed her level at Harvard company class. After kicking a few ideas around, they landed on Coffee Meets Bagel, a free dating app that provides people an individual solitary match each and every day, with extra features on the market.

Up to now, Coffee Meets Bagel has raised $11.2 million in endeavor capital, making headlines with regards to rejected a $30 million purchase offer from famed endeavor capitalist Mark Cuban on television’s Shark Tank. None regarding the three siblings includes a history in computer engineering or scienc — Arum and Dawoon hold MBAs, and Soo is really a designer.

Getaround: Jessica Scorpio

Getaround creator Jessica Scorpio’s BA level is in Political Science, but she began the organization after attending Singularity University, a Silicon Valley system made to encourage young leaders to tackle problems that are global. Bing creator Larry webpage challenged Scorpio’s course to choose a basic concept which could influence a billion individuals in a decade.

Getaround had been started on a straightforward concept: if you do not drive your car or truck every single day, have you thought to hire it away to other people? That concept has led Getaround to $45 million in endeavor capital, therefore the business has approximated so it makes automobile owners $8,000 per year while saving individuals without their cars that are own8,000 on rentals escort backpage Ontario and fuel.

Teespring: Walker Williams

Teespring ended up being created by Walker Williams and Evan Stites-Clayton as they had been seniors at Brown University: They wished to make tees to commemorate the closing of a well liked club, but did not desire to construct the money.

Today, Teespring is a website where musicians can crowdfund the development of their very own designs, with $56.9 million in financing and over 200 workers. Williams functions as CEO and it is in control of keeping consumer experience, while Stites-Clayton is CTO.

Tilt: Tony Beshara

Tony Beshara came up with all the concept for Dvelo, while working as a microloans collection representative in Africa. The initial concept ended up being to allow individuals make tiny loans to charitable causes in your community, but individuals began utilizing it their particular means. He triggered a co-founder ( Khaled Hussein) last year, changed the title to Crowdtilt, and went in to the globe with a method for permitting anyone pool cash together for such a thing — events, dishes, homes, whatever.

An additional title modification later on, and Tilt remains to be, funded at $37 million, and utilized by ESPN to allow Fantasy Football players come up with an award cooking pot.

Sprig: Gagan Biyani

Sprig features a concept that is deliciously simple. Motorists load their cars up aided by the pre-selected dishes for the until a customer hails one down with an app — almost like a Lyft day. The consumer gets their meals, in addition to Sprig motorist trips off to another location one.

And talking about Lyft, Sprig founder Gagan Biyani — who holds a BA in Economics from UC Berkeley — is a previous consultant to your automobile sharing company. While working a night time, some body on their group asked in the event that Lyft model might be put on meals, and growth. Sprig came to be.

Today, Sprig has $11.7 million in capital and over 30 employees that are full-time. In reality, Sprig’s very first hire ended up being Bing’s previous professional cook, Nate Keller.

NerdWallet: Tim Chen

NerdWallet ended up being founded last year by previous monetary analyst Tim Chen and previous JPMorgan Chase banker Jacob Gibson, utilizing the objective of assisting clients make smarter choices about their cash. The business got started whenever Chen required a brand new charge card, and thus put up a spreadsheet of 1,000 provides, switching him in to the go-to charge card guru for coworkers and buddies.

Today, NerdWallet has over 150 employees, a swank brand new bay area workplace, and containsn’t taken a dime of outside capital.