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There’s no need drink that coffee or pop that adderall anymore, just chew on some ThinkGum, a new creation from Stanford grad student Matt Davidson. The gum is designed to improve concentration, increase alertness, enhance information recall and reduce careless errors by packing the gum with herbs and herbal extracts that have been scientifically demonstrated to exhibit these characteristics. ThinkGum will also help with all nighters; it has the equivalent amount of caffeine as half a can of soda.

The story begins at the University of California at Berkeley where Matt used to regularly chew gum to help him concentrate while studying. After a bit of research and reading some studies that show chewing gum can actually help studying, he quickly realized he could help other students by developing his own enhanced gum. After tinkering with rosemary and his own concoctions, he self-financed the operation to have his gum produced and distributed to several stores. Matt has hit the ground running with over 160,000 pieces of gum sold in the past 5 months producing over $20,000 in sales. Right now his product is in 15 Californian stores and expects to expand to many more over the course of the year, aiming for $75,000 in sales by year-end. He was approached by one distributor after seeing his product in a store and another who saw him on Fox news.

He says he has focused more on getting his product in stores rather than marketing. Naturally, the product has been able to sell itself. Once he is able to hit other distributors and large venues, he expects that he will be able to reach sales in the millions after a couple of years. This isn’t farfetched since his product is perfectly tailored to meet an on campus need. Adderall may be hard to come by, coffee can add up to a bunch of money, and other alternatives such as soda and pills are unhealthy, so ThinkGum comes in and adds a perfect combination of ingredients to give students that extra edge for a small price.

Matt is yet another entrepreneur who is multitasking, cranking out a company as well as a Ph.D. from one of the most esteemed institutions in the country. Due to his success he is now looking for investors to bring his operation to the next level as well as students who are interested marketing on campus (if you’re interested, shoot Matt an email at mdavidson@thinkgum). You can be sure that students will be packing their pockets and desks drawers with this gum.

The story goes to show how anyone can draw inspiration from a daily routine. At the same time, it shows how you can start a company at any time in your life, no matter what you’re doing at the moment. Look at Matt, he is chewing his way to a Ph.D. while becoming yet another young mogul.

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