Husband and wife team, Angie and Joe Nelson, founded eWaste Direct, Inc. on Earth Day in 2008. This green business was created to divert electronic waste from landflls, ofering multiple services to businesses throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Initially, the Nelsons focused on collecting broken and retired electronics from businesses and selling the materials to various scrap recyclers. However, they soon realized that instead of selling the electronics to vendors to be destroyed for commodities, they could list marketable items for resale on eBay.

Theresa Cox has always loved the color red. It inspired her when she designed her home in a community outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Her obsession dictated her choice of red shutters, a ruby red kitchen, a red accented poolside oasis (affectionately nicknamed Club Red by friends) and countless red tchotchkes. However, when Theresa made the choice to retire from a 30-year career in the finance operations area of higher education, she wanted to move onto the next chapter of her life and start fresh. For Theresa that meant downsizing, selling her home and almost everything in it.

John Norman founded Max Optical, LLC in 2000. For the first ten years, the business was a side hobby for John, specializing in selling equipment to duplicate CDs and DVDs. As time went on, John realized people were using these items less. So he needed to change his business strategy. John began contacting sales managers that he had close relationships with. Through these connections, John shifted his focus to selling wholesale items, primarily compatible and remanufactured laser & copied toner, inkjet cartridges and ribbon.