A dad can’t find a bakery to make a birthday cake that can accommodate his daughter’s allergy-related needs. Two freelancers realize they need a way to organize all of their client contracts and can’t find software that adequately handles their use case. Necessity is often hailed as the mother of innovation – but not all ideas come from necessity. Unfortunately, in our experience, often media coverage of the ideas that powered amazing businesses and projects often stops at a very superficial level. The founders noticed a need and boom – idea. Often the ideation process has a much longer, more complex story and so we’ve asked some entrepreneurs and creatives we admire to go into detail about their ideation stories.

Cindy Tawiah

In 2017 I had a wonderful opportunity at BWI airport. I opened the Diva By Cindy retail store( it was the 1st natural hair care brand to open a store in the airport). The goal was to replenish the shampoo and conditioner that was thrown away by TSA resulting in major trauma for women who needed their products. Our first year was extremely successful, but in early 2018 I received a devastating email to say my unit was being reclaimed. Read more>>

Anastasia Azaryan

Honestly there was one night, I think around January 2020 at 3am where I was sleeping and then randomly came up with my brand name and I immediately woke up and purchased the domain after checking that it wasn’t taken anywhere else and that the name wasn’t trademarked. Now I always knew as a kid that I wanted something to do with fashion. Read more>>

Jazmin Cornejo

It was the day I boarded my flight home to California after living abroad in Australia for over three years. My longtime boyfriend and I broke up, I was leaving a job & team that I loved, and my dad had passed away the year prior. Crying to my mom on the phone from the fear of the unknown, and the big question, what will I do next? (A huge fear of never traveling again sitting in my stomach!) This wasn’t an option in my book, I also couldn’t keep leaving my job every three years while moving to new countries. (I was 30, broke and tired!) Read more>>

Tess Traynor

I decided to start my company-Spellbinding because I love using my artist abilities to create, design, and make products to enhance others well-being. I was inspired by the increased demand for natural products, as I have been drawn to more natural products for my own well-being. At the time I was working for a small business that made skin care and dealt with essential oils, which was a big learning experience for me. Read more>>

Brittany Chan

My husband (boyfriend at the time) and I came up with the idea for my channel together when we were still living in NYC. I’m a Cantonese heritage speaker and was taking graphic design classes at the time. My husband was working at the UN as a German translator and was looking for—but couldn’t find—fun, immersive Cantonese study material. We thought: “How can we combine our skills and do a project together?” We started with simple cartoons where he would write beginner-friendly dialogues, and I would translate and animate them. Read more>>

Dr. Shakira Lynn

I always dreamed of impacting the lives of girls around the world. I first came up with the idea of my non-profit organization in 2014 while having a conversation with my sister Latoria. I was getting glammed up for a photo shoot and we came up with the idea of giving away a dream prom for a young lady at Cedar Shoals High school where we both graduated from. We imagined giving away a worry free experience for a deserving young lady. Read more>>

Cheryl Jones

Travel has always been a passion of mine since my youth. I loved geography and would spend time looking at the maps and pictures of different countries. Back then, the World Book Encyclopedia was what Google is today. I would grab one of those books and just imagine I was in some of the places I was reading about. Read more>>

Rubina and Neelam Damani

We are two sisters, Rubina and Neelam, who absolutely love tea, and have a deep, profound respect for the healing power of Ayurveda. But if anyone had told us we’d be running a tea business, we wouldn’t have believed them! Now, it’s all we do, and get to spend our days hand-crafting Ayurvedic teas and superfood blends. Read more>>

Morgan Seigler

Ever since I was a little girl I was always writing on any surface I could get my hands on. Paper, notebooks, mirrors, napkins, driveways, etc. You name it, I’ve probably written on it. Seeing a blank surface drew me in like a good sale at your favorite shoe store. I had to have it, and I had to write on it now. I dabbled in some light drawing in my early adolescent years but quickly learned that I loved forming letters and words more. Read more>>

Alicia Boateng

My love and admiration for that first sip of coffee is like no other. I have been drinking the same brand of coffee for over 25 years. One morning as I was on my 2nd cup of coffee, I looked at my husband and said, what if my coffee cup was as enriching and empowering as my coffee is to me? I then collected a few stones I had in my workshop, drew out a few designs and created my very first Afro Glam Cup named Felicia. I named her Felicia because that is my sister in laws name and second, she is dazzling in every which way. Read more>>

Janet Young

I came up with the idea to start my juice company after going through a traumatic health experience. At the age of 45, I woke up with a terrible headache. I drove myself to the emergency room where they did a Cat scan and found out that I had a brain tumor and an aneurysm. They performed surgery to stop the bleeding and remove the pituitary tumor. After spending 6 weeks in the hospital I went home and made the decision to improve my health.It was then that I started creating natural healthy juices and that is how I came up with the idea to start Caribbean Medley Read more>>

Jalisa Smith

I love writing and poetry. I loss my father at a very young age and to remember him I use to write poems about him and the times we spent. One day I was writing and it was so good and inspiring I figured it could help other children who loss the loved one at a very young age as well and I decided to turn it into a book. Read more>>

Amerika Brooks

The name of my business is Amerika B. Style Me. Although it is a service-based business (branding, social media marketing, styling, and photography) I wanted to make sure that it reflected my personal brand as well. Initially, my brand name was Haute Amerikan Image and I changed it after about a year or two when I decided I needed something catchy and more relatable. Read more>>

Helena Silva

It all started with a diaper bag! The first time I became a parent, I had a difficult time finding eco-friendly and stylish products, including a diaper bag. Everything out there had bunnies, teddy-bears, and was made from toxic materials. Years later, when I became pregnant with my second child, I still felt frustrated. The designs were nicer but still made from materials that were not only toxic but harsh on the environment such as leather and PVC. So, I decided to design my own “diaper bag” made from Cork, one of the most sustainable and natural materials in the world. Read more>>

Chef Willie Holmes

The Masked Baker Baking Competition (TMB )started at the height of the Covid 19 Pandemic. Immediately once the world “stood still,” all parties immediately stopped. Let’s always remember when planning an event, get together, or celebration, there’s always a cake involved. When all parties were halted, a ton of Birthday Cakes, Wedding Cakes, and for some people “Because it’s Tuesday Cake,” were canceled. Here in Houston, a few Home Bakers business closed down, including myself. It was then, I knew I had to do something else. Simultaneously, it was at the start of the Black Lives Matter movement due to recent events dealing with George Floyd’s death. Read more>>

Briana Moreaux

B. Communications Consulting, LLC began as a passion project for brand management and digital marketing strategy. It began as more so an alternative to big-ticket agencies so that small businesses and solopreneurs can receive high-level content management services without sacrificing quality work. Read more>>

Luckii Ya Dig

Stoner Muziik comes from being born in a drug epidemic era. Tbh drugs “weed, pills, crack, etc” is the one of those thing every hood have in common. My father was a drug dealer, one of the biggest from my city. I used my background as a way to connect with the people. Every drug is fixed on a vibe, a feeling, or a chase, and music does all of those things for me. Read more>>

Beverly Obasiolu

How I came up with the ideas for Faschic Magazine was not an overnight process. I had to work on it. But initially, I came up with the idea after realizing that while modeling, there weren’t any recognition of our talents here in my hometown. I had to do something to showcase not only myself, but local people who share the same talents as I do. Read more>>

Alissa Marcolongo

I was cooking one morning at the diner when a man came in and sat at the breakfast counter. He began telling me about this little shop he had just opened with his wife. It was a simple GrabNGo concept. It got me thinking, this idea is small and manageable, has little to no overhead, is still in the industry, is Covid friendly, a fun concept and will give us some quality of life back. So, my husband Mark and I began to put it all together and make it our reality. We started by coming up with a name, finding a location, choosing our products and creating a theme. Read more>>

Greg Mollin

Artifact Books stemmed from an idea I’d had for quite a while. The curated store experience is something I have always liked. I enjoy niche and collectors stores like genre-specific record stores and specialty bookshops and wanted to bring some of that energy into my store. I have been a collector my whole life and there’s just something about walking into a store and seeing things displayed that speak to my interests or aesthetics that makes me feel at home. Read more>>

Steven VanDyke

On July 8, 2018, my sister at 41 years old had a massive stroke. The stroke happened in front of my mother but everyone is not as blessed to bein the presence of another person. My idea for 911 Alert came from my family experience with my sister. Read more>>

Stacey Kensinger and Ashley Trinklein

We, Ashley (Occupational Therapy Assistant) and Stacey (Physical Therapist Assistant) met while working together in a skilled nursing facility which also provided home health and outpatient services. We continued to see the same patients come back again and again because once they were discharged from therapy services, they would lose their strength and experience falls or ailments. We joined forces in creating a way that seniors could continue with their fitness routines in order to decrease their fall risk and likelihood of reoccurring hospitalizations. Read more>>

Lane Tunstall

It all started in 2017 when I became obsessed with charcuterie boards-making them, eating them, talking about them. Fast forward to 2019-I had been a stay at home mom and was ready to go back to work when my youngest went to kinder and I was trying to think of a side gig to get me a few more months until I figured out what to do with my life career wise. I decided to sell some charcuterie boards and well I figured it out! Read more>>

Ben MacMinnf

organization (ESO) and business incubator in Columbus, Georgia. As you are likely well aware, ESO’s are not a unique business idea. Further, the organization is only four years old, meaning we were not even early adopters in the industry. What we have found, though, is that ESO’s tend to thrive when they are at a local level. This means that whether we were an early adopter or late to the game, getting started was all that mattered. Read more>>

Chinelo Fleary

This story might sound familiar in the sense COVID came as a blessing and curse too many, but me COVID allowed me time to think for forced me to become uncomfortable. Ma’at Nail Polish is a direct reflection of ambition, resilience, hard work. Ive never been the type of person who didn’t enjoy the challenge and always wanting to the possibilities of the unknown and pushing my limits. Me, I did it, it never seem impossible, Ive always been a doer and wanted to continue to do and the shutdown of the world put time and opportunity into perspective for me. Read more>>

Allison Hills

To better answer this question, I think it will be helpful if I provide a bit of my personal background. I am originally from Slidell, LA (a smaller, suburban town near New Orleans), and am from a huge family (one of 10 kiddos!) As you can imagine, we weren’t able to travel often, and when we did, we loaded up the family van–kids on laps, teenagers sleeping of floorboards, it was the 90s! On the summer before my freshman year of high school, we visited Annapolis, MD and toured the US Naval Academy. Read more>>

Brittany “Celebrity Brenea” Murphy

I literally started my company with $50 and 1 bundle. When my Mom was diagnosed with Breast and Thyroid Cancer, she has been a Celebrity Hairstylist and Makeup Artist for over 25 years. Being self-employed, she had money but no health insurance, so I started my first hair company: Celebrity Luxury Hair to help pay for things she needed help with. She still had my younger brother a left leg amputee and my Grandfather who has Alzheimer’s to provide for. Read more>>

Jessica Johnson

I created Hidden San Diego in 2010 as a way to inspire the community to get out and explore all the hidden gems throughout the city. This was before the days of Instagram, Tik Tok or influencers. When I started my brand it was because there was a gap of quality websites covering the less discovered pockets throughout San Diego. I knew I could offer a lot in this category. Read more>>

Mindy Tanimoto

This is a funny story of how I turned a complaint into a positive and created a business from it. So, when my oldest son was younger, he was doing modeling and acting. When you are models you need to keep your headshots updated regularly, so when you go in the audition the photo you submitted looks like you currently. Well since I had always taken photos of my son quite often, he says one day, Read more>>

Lisa Lopez

I still remember that light bulb moment when my t-shirt business idea had popped up in my mind. At the time, I was overall quite happy in my life, which wasn’t always the case. You could say that I wasn’t living a very happy life before moving to San Diego. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I was choosing to live that way. Until one day, I had had enough. Read more>>