Two New York designers, Dan Provost & Tom Gerhardt one day came up with an idea, a tripod mount for the iPhone, ‘a cleverly shaped accessory that lets you screw the phone into a standard camera tripod and doubles as a handy desk stand’. They had the idea and design but they lacked the know-how.

How do they go about building prototypes, finding manufacturers, getting retail contracts? Without the time and the money they gave up on their idea…

That is until they came across Kickstarter. A website which brings together creators and potential investors. Investors being anyone, you, me anyone; with access to the internet. The designers managed to get a prototype built and did a bit of promotion sending a link to their site to John Gruber, who runs the popular Apple-following blog Daring Fireball.

One hour after posting their project received the $10,000 they asked for. By the end of the month they managed to get $137,417 from 5,273 donors after other tech blogs heard about their first hour success.

Soon the product called the Glif was available to buy at $20 a piece. You would of got one for free if you had made a $20 pledge when the product was taking investments. A $50 pledge would of got you a 3D printed version for $250 you could have dinner with the two inventors. Even then you would probaly have to live in and around New York to get that.

Check out their promotional video below:

Glif Montage from Glif on Vimeo.

Kickstarter is a great way of getting a product out to market and also great for people to get involved. Funding is only taken if the full amount needed is met, so that creators are not left short meaning the product may not make production. This way investors can be sure they will have the chance to get their hands on the product they want to see.

Surprisingly many people warmed to this idea quickly. Giving funding to other peoples ideas doesn’t strike you as something that would take off in such away, but it has and gained huge popularity over the last year along with a similar company, Quirky, founded by 23 year old Ben Kaufman.

Last year saw Kickstarter, ‘kick-start’ 4,000 successful projects. To be apart of it you can visit the Kickstarter website and maybe post your own creative idea.

Ben Kaufman is the CEO and Founder of Quirky, a social product development company. Now what is that? you say.

Well here is a graphic to explain:

Quirky allows inventors to get their products out into the world by opening a new supply channel. We get more and more innovative products every week. Quirky get a nice new shiny product to sell.

Quirky is centered around a community (people registered with them) where any one join and become an influencer. Vote on which product you want to see and even submit your own ideas if you want (It only costs a tenner).

23 year old Ben Kaufman publicly launched Quirky in June 2009. He started on his entrepreneurial journey while in his senior year of high school, when he started Mophie, an ipod accessory company. In his effort to get this off the ground he managed to get his parents to remortgage their house. Now that’s determination!

Well he paid them back quickly as Mophie won “Best in Show” at MacWorld 2006. The young entrepreneur went on to sell Mophie to mStation in 2007.

He used his time after this to further develop his idea of social product development, which ended in Quirky.

He was also named in Inc Magazine as the top entrepreneur in the country under the age of 30. He was 20 at the time.

This is only the first chapter in his entrepreneurial journey…

I decided to put up a list of entrepreneurs who dropped out of high school/college/university, I guess just a way to let you guys know that university doesn’t really determine your chances of being successful, at the same time, a lot of graduates also have become very successful, i will producing a list of top graduates that have money.

Mark Zuckerberg

Dropped out of Harvard University to Pursue Facebook, Now a Billionaire..Good choice or not?

Ashley Qualls

17 years old high school dropout. Made more than $1 million. Earns as much as $70K a month Starting whateverlife.com

Ben Kaufman

The 23 years old entrepreneur missed much of his senior year in high school while getting his first manufacturing line running in China, has a startup called Kluster, dropped out of college to pursue a career in world domination, a process he began by creating funky iPod cases?
Currently Running Quirky www.quirky.com

David Karp

David Karp is a high school dropout who founded Tumblr.

Dustin Moskovitz

One of facebook’s co-founder, Dustin attended Harvard University as an Economics major for two years before moving to Palo Alto, California to work fulltime at Facebook.

Pete Cashmore

Pete is the CEO and founder of Mashable.com. He founded Mashable in a small Scottish town in 2005 at age 19.

Matt Mullenweg

He dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco from Houston, TX

Kristopher Tate

At age 16, Kristopher launched a photo sharing page, Zooomr. He finished high school five years early, notoriously known for driving his parents’ car from San Diego to Cupertino at the age of 16 to launch photo-sharing site Zooomr.

Aaron Levie

He dropped out of college and moved to Palo Alto, Calif., to run Box.net, his online file sharing start-up with his friend and co-founder.

Blake Ross

Co-creator of Mozilla Firefox browser, A Stanford dropout

Adam Hildreth

He left school at age of 16 to face Dubit limited full time.

Derek Johnson

Derek dropped of the University of Houston Entrepreneurial program, Derek has raised half a million dollars in investments for the company from private investors and the Bellingham Angel Group.

Fraser Doherty

Doherty left school at the age of 16 to work on his jams full time.

Mr. Doherty borrowed $10,000 from a bank to cover general expenses and more factory time to produce three flavors: Blueberry & Black Currant, Rhubarb & Ginger and Cranberry & Raspberry.

Patrick Collison

Software wizard. Dropped out of MIT during his freshman year to help two friends develop and eventually sell Auctomatic for millions of dollars.

Kieran O’neill

After running HolyLemon and PSU while at school, He decided to leave the university to work full-time on Playfire full-time