Ternary spinel nanoparticles are an exciting materials system that have been increasingly pursued for a variety of energy applications such as supercapacitors and as electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction. For example, Cobalt-manganese spinel oxides, in particular, have demonstrated outstanding performance as supercapacitors and electrocatalysts.Despite their exemplary performance in multiple electrochemical applications, there are few reports in the literature with high-quality ternary spinel nanoparticles, such as Co-Mn-O. Most reports show aggregated and polydisperse products that typically contain impurity phases like rock salt.In this work, we demonstrate the synthesis of monodisperse nanoparticles of ternary spinels using colloidal chemistry. To overcome challenges for ternary spinel oxides we use oxidized amines as a route to form the high-oxidation state complexes needed for stable spinel oxides, and modify the ligand binding to obtain colloidally stable nanoparticles. For the sulfide spinel system, we show the use of amino acids as a low-cost sulfur source. Finally, we extend this work to access high entropy nanoparticles for electrochemical applications.