We're living during a time where technology is advancing at an extremely fast pace. Behind this lighting-fast advancement, there are some seriously creative people are thinking outside of the box and dreaming of new ways to work with this technology, often resulting in outstanding uses of technology. Here are just a few of the great minds of our time that are destined for big things in 2014.
Jack Dorsey
Jack Dorsey has had a few great years. He co-founded the company Obvious, along with Biz Stone and Noah Glass. That company eventually formed Twitter. In the past few years, though, he's been working at a small business platform he started. Named Square, this company made a tiny product that attaches to smart devices and allows users to accept mobile payments.
Square also has an app that can send receipts through text messages and email. The company has grown exponentially over the past three years, and just last year, Business Insider valued it at $3.2 billion. What's next for Jack Dorsey and Square? Well, there's talks of Square offering an IPO as early as next year.
Naveen Jain
Among many other entrepreneurial ventures, Naveen Jain is the founder of Moon Express. The company became a leader in the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE competition and was selected by NASA for its $30 million Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data program. The ultimate goal of Moon Express is to develop a new, flexible spacecraft that will reduce the cost of space explorations, as well as mining the moon for resources that have economic value.
According to a recent article published by Wired, the first mission is planned for 2015 and is the first in a series of missions that will focus on exploration and commerce. Naveen Jain is pretty adamant that in the very near future, we'll be taking a vacation on the moon, and in 2014, he'll continue his work to make that happen.
Perry Chen
While you may not have heard of Perry Chen, you most definitely have heard of his brainchild, Kickstarter. Using Kickstarter, people with ideas can get funding from people that are interested in seeing that project succeed. Through this site, people have brought innovative projects to life. He was recently listed as one of Time's 100 most influential people. Perry Chen should definitely be someone to watch for in 2014.
Larry Page
Page, along with Sergey Brin, co-founded Google. His own personal worth is estimated at $20.3 billion, making him the 13th richest person in America. Google is responsible for all sorts of innovations and digital products -- search engines, mail, stock quotes, street view, and many other things, the most recent of which is Google Glass. Glass will allow users to take images and record videos from their glasses. What's next for Larry Page and Google? We'll find out next year.
Jeff Bezos
Bezos is an entrepreneur and investor known for creating Amazon. The company is well-known for its fantastic customer service, huge inventory, and its line of Kindle tablets and e-readers. It has recently made a huge push for digital content, partnering with various TV and movie studios to have the rights to stream content. Amazon also just announced that it's going to begin delivering items on Sundays, which could possibly give the USPS its much-needed boost. Jeff Bezos and Amazon will undoubtedly have a fantastic 2014, but will they change the industry with a new device?
Ben Silbermann
Over the past three years, Ben Silbermann is personally responsible for potentially millions of creative projects all over the world. He's the CEO of Pinterest, which launched in 2010. He initially worked at Google, then started to develop his own iPhone app. After that failure, Pinterest was born. In its early days, Pinterest was in a closed beta and had very few active users. Today, Pinterest has more than 20 million users. Keep an eye on Pinterest as Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra continue to work on it.
There are so many great minds working on amazing projects and businesses that will enrich our daily lives, and the ones listed here are the most notable ones. Pay attention to all these guys in 2014, they're going to do amazing things.