John Osher

John Osher is a serial entrepreneur and product inventor from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, best known for creating Spinbrush—the battery-powered electric toothbrush that became the top-selling model in the U.S. and was acquired by Procter & Gamble in 2001 for $475 million. The Spinbrush story traces back to a much smaller, sillier idea: a battery-powered spinning lollipop called SpinPop that Osher had invented years earlier.

Before founding the company that became Spinbrush, Osher had already built and sold a baby-products company to Gerber. He developed hundreds of consumer products over his career, relying more on instinct and real-world testing than formal market research. After selling one business to Hasbro, he reportedly made a detailed list of every mistake he had made—and every mistake he had watched other entrepreneurs make—and resolved to apply those lessons going forward.

Osher has never held a conventional job. His entire career has been built on founding, building, and eventually selling companies for increasingly large sums. He has been featured on the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge platform, the Wharton School's Knowledge@Wharton, and the EO 360 podcast, where he discussed how curiosity and relentless problem-solving shaped his approach to building products people actually want.