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.

Oriana Papin-Zoghbi

My co-founders and I decided to start a company (AOA Dx) focused on early detection for ovarian cancer due to the critical need to address ovarian cancer’s high mortality rate. Read more>>

Shawntrell Smith

In 2019, after a decade-long career in accounting and suffering from severe burnout and chronic stress, I resigned and moved back home to Miami to prioritize my well-being. Read more>>

Toyon Embry

I guess you can say it all started with my grandad and father . they are alot to blame for my interest in animals overall. Dogs have always been a hooby of mine from an early age. Read more>>

Maia Buljeta-Fuchs

My sister and I were homeschooled K-12 in the style of worldschooling by my incredible artist mom, who raised us and turned the world into our classroom. Read more>>

Margarita Arriagada

The idea for my business developed at a serendipituous moment when I was putting together a photo album of my mother’s life after her passing a few years prior. Read more>>

Fatou Haidara

I hate to sound cliche, but entrepreneurship was never something I saw myself actively pursuing. It literally fell into my lap. In January of 2020 I’d just moved back to Atlanta after uprooting my entire life and moving to Boston for a job that I hated. Read more>>

Matthew Smith

After years working in an ophthalmology practice where everything was very run if the mill and generic in style, I felt a need to shake things up and do something different, something our small town hadn’t really seen. Read more>>

Melissa Gottesman

The idea to start Riley Versa came from a personal desire for a product I couldn’t find! It all started on a trip to Miami; I packed in a carry-on suitcase and didn’t have room for more than one purse. Read more>>

Noraliz Maysonet Carvajal

The idea of starting a business ministry started with the hardest lesson, during the toughest season, and through the longest process of my most recent adult life. Read more>> 

Deepali Jamwal

The passion for community building is something I was born with. As the daughter of an Army officer, I grew up in a defense community imbued with immense pride, fearlessness, and courage from an early age. Read more>>

Megan Dupuis

In 2020 during the pandemic, I was a stay at home mom to my 2 children. While I enjoyed the time spent with my children and will never take that time for granted, I knew deep down that I wanted to fuel a fire that was in me. Read more>>

Lionel Alexander

You can honestly find inspiration in the most unexpected of places. For me, it was in a boat, riding through a canal in Amsterdam. Read more>>

Corey Quinn

After 10 years of selling digital marketing services, I believed the only way to grow an agency was to have a charismatic founder who used their network to gain new clients. Read more>>

Natalie Bell

The idea for The City Social stemmed from my experiences as a life coach, where I frequently heard from clients about their frustrations with the modern dating landscape. Read more>>