Young Entrepreneur Scholarship Winners For Yanik’s Underground 2012

By: Josh     Topics: Entrepreneur News,Entrepreneurship,Young Entrepreneurs

This is the forth year Yanik Silver has offered young entrepreneurs around the world a chance to come to his seminar for free. For the past three years, I have hosted the competition on WebMakeMoney! Every year we accept 10 winners, who come and meet us in Washington to network and learn. Check these guys out, expect to see great things from them in the future. If you’re heading to Underground this year, let us know! Will be great to see everyone. Check out Yanik Silver’s Underground here.

Sasha Gilberg – www.2XC.com

Sasha helps marketers and entrepreneurs achieve a 2XC (two times conversion) on their website, fast. He lists his biggest inspriation as his dad, Will Smith and Bill Gates. Growing up pretty poor, Sasha’s biggest initial inspiration was to create a better life for his family, and at the age of 16, a motivational speaker came to his school, led a talk and finished his talk by saying “Don’t worry if you don’t know what you wanna do, just pick your dream car to get started” – so he picked a Porsche 911 Turbo. With that set in his mind, at the age of 18, he set himself a target of owning that very car by the age of 21, and he soon realised that it would only be possible through success in business. It’s this goal that he’s set himself that has motivated him to push himself harder than he had done before, and inspired him to keep persisting when times got tough.

The entrepreneurs that inspired him the most are Ruslan Kogan, and Siimon Reynolds, and his favourite quote, “Stop waiting for things to happen. Go out and make them happen”

Jack Ross – www.grackleapp.com

Jack is an iPhone app developer, and currently has an app named Grackle available on the App Store. It’s a fun game in which you are a farmer and birds are attacking your farm. As you progress the birds get more dificult, but your weapons get bigger and better.

He lists his biggest inspiration as his brother. – “When he was four years old, he set the goal of becoming a fighter pilot for the Navy. Nearly 17 years later, he is studying aerospace engineering and on the fast track to flying jets. He has never given up and always given his best. He has taught me to never give up and to stay determined to achieve all you can.” Clearly a strong inspiration to someone, even at such a young age. This is Jack’s favourite quote…

“Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is, everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” – Steve Jobs

Philip Hu – Philhu.com, TacticalKatana.com

Philip originally started Tacticalkatana.com as a fun project with his friend Ryan; it has since then become a zombie apocalypse weapons and products recommendation catalog. The website serves as a guide to the best zombie weapons that can be purchased through the internet. Kind of ridiculous, but a lot of fun.

Philip’s biggest inspirations are his parents, who immigrated to the United States from China in the 1980s with very little, in search of opportunity and a new life. In the process, through dedication and hard work, they have built a prosperous life and family. Philip’s parents’ values of hard work, education, and financial discipline have inspired Philip to become an entrepreneur seeking to make a positive impact with his ventures.

“The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” – Nolan Bushnell

Courtney Shaye Whittington – www.twidlife.com (under construction)

Her Online business is underconstruction – Its mission is to provide advice, laughs, products and services that help people! Blogging, video feeds, advice and products by herself and “very talented people I’ve met along my journey” all with one gib purpose: Helping women which in turn helps men who help women and so on. Sounds very interesting and should be lots of fun.

She lists her biggest inspiration as Mrs. Joan Averwater, Aka. G’ma Joan, which is interesting to hear. She says her grandmother has helped her believe in myself and is truly one of the most influential women to anyone and everyone that has ever had the pleasure of meeting her.

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.” – Audrey Hepburn

Abigail Johnson Akingbade – Veggieab.com

Abigail runs a lifestyle blog which provides inspiration, cooking and cultural advice to eat and live depression free. The focus of her project seems to be based around the idea of adjusting your diet to live depression free, which I’m sure you’ll agree, is a very unique take on a crowded niche, which may just help her to stand out and become a success.

She lists her biggest inspiration as Lisa Irby, and for those who don’t know, Lisa is a full-time Webmaster, blogger and affiliate marketer, who’s been working in internet marketing since 1998.

“Make the rest of your life the best of your life.” – Eric Thomas

Dainis Graveris – www.1stwebdesigner.com

1WD is an online magazine about everything web design related starting from inspirational articles, blogging and freelancer tips, to hardcore coding tutorials about WordPress, jQuery for example. It has grown to be one of the biggest design blogs worldwide.

His first inspiration was Yaro Starak with his blogging course, now there are a lot of great sources like Mixergy.com, Neil Patel, Glen Allsop from Viperchill and of course Michael Dunlop (his words, not mine). From the other side Steve Jobs has been always great inspiration about the way he thought; his biography left huge impact.

Favorite Quote is not surprisingly Steve Jobs words, from his speech at Stanford – “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”, he’s planning on having those words to be engraved on his hand as a tattoo.

Arianna Vacca – mybookfriend.net

Arianna’s website reviews and recommends books for Young Adult readers. The site is still in its early stages, but it’s well constructed, and looks to be very promising.

Not surprisingly, Ariana’s biggest inspiration is Jeff Bezos, from Amazon.com. Amazon started out as the world’s largest book store, which was met with criticism and a lawsuit from Barnes and Noble, but soon surpassed any question, and is the largest retailer of books in the world, and just like mybookfriend, it’s packed full of reviews.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” – Maya Angelou

Matej Bešter – twitter.com/matejbester

Matej is a freelance web developer with over 7 years of experience helping individual to corporate clients grow their business online. Now exploring internet/affiliate marketing as an independent SEO specialist. He doesn’t have a website yet, but follow his twitter in the meantime. His biggest inspirations are Eben Pagan, Steve Jobs, Anthony Robbins, and Frank Kern.

“Go beyond. Way beyond what people expect. Way beyond what you’re paid to do. Way beyond what anyone else does.” – Eben Pagan

Dmitriy Kozlov – visiontechteam.com

Dmitriy’s website is all about marketing, web design, and social media services for entrepreneurs and small business owners. They strive to be a Triple Bottom Line company. Go check out his website, it’s clearly very well thought out and put together. Some pretty familiar names are listed as his top inspirations with the likes of Steve Jobs, Tim Ferriss, and Gary Vaynerchuk.

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something…almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” – Steve Jobs

Chris Monery –  memorycardsuk.com

Memorycardsuk focuses on memory cards but also sells accessories, hardware, games and electronics. Chris doesn’t have a biggest inspiration per se, he’s simply inspired by anyone who started off in life with nothing and made it purely off their own back.

There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory – Francis Drake