Alvin Koo's Blog

Entrepreneurship could not be better represented than by Terracycle. In brief, Terracycle started in 2001 by Tom Szaky, a student at Princeton University. He was very passionate when he witnessed a friend feed food scraps to worms to produce fertilizer and hereafter fully invested himself by putting in all his savings into creating worm-poop fertilizers. His big break came when he signed a deal with Wal-Mart and started producing huge quantities of fertilizers. Big box retailers thought his idea was innovative. According to Schumpeter’s definition of entrepreneurship, Terracycle achieved innovation in all four categories:

1. worm-poop fertilizer (product)
2. soda pop bottle as fertilizer container (production methods)
3. riding the Green Wave (new market)
4. hired ex-convicts, parolees, veterans (new forms of organization)

Terracyle is now a huge business from first sales of $500,000 in 2005 to multimillions in 2009.

Tom meets every criterion on the checklist for entrepreneurs. He had great passion in what he was doing and believed in his vision of corporate social responsibility. Besides investing all his savings he also dropped out of Princeton to commit to his business. Very few people have the same persistence in a vision, making his characteristics that of a small percent of the population.

http://www.terracycle.net/history/2001