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Some of the World’s Top Businesses Started In a Garage

Some of the top businesses we admire today did not startup with large investments and swanky offices, but rather with modest beginnings and often in a garage.


Some of the top businesses we admire today did not startup with large investments, swanky offices, and flashy headlines, but rather with modest beginnings and often in a garage. These behemoth companies started small with a big idea and demonstrate that a large corporate office or capital round is not a determinant factor for long-term success.

Starting a business in humble places (e.g., garages, kitchen tables, libraries, college dorm room, etc.) has proved that the execution of great ideas matter and can be realized irrespective of where they start. Consider four world-renowned companies that got their start in a garage.

 

Google

In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in Susan Wojcicki’s garage. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were two Stanford students who launched Google as another undergraduate project, and it took them five months to finish it.

Source: Google

The Google project took up a lot of their time and interfered with their education, and they decided to sell it to Excite. Excite turned down the $1 million offer, and Google is today the most visited website globally, with a valuation of $420 billion. Though this may appear to be a humorous tale rather than a huge victory, it kept Page and Brin in command of Google’s fate.

Google is currently the most used search engine in the world, where anyone with an internet-connected device can search for almost anything under the sun. Looking for a new DIY project? Useful sources for studies? Some fun new slots? When to expect the next mobile update? How to make leather belts and bags? Google is just a click away from the answer. It is by far one of the most successful global companies.

 

Microsoft

In 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen started a small business located in a tiny garage as their workstation; the behemoth Microsoft arose from that initial venture. They both had limited resources to assist them but a plethora of programming skills. They would go on to license the first operating system they created for roughly $80,000.

After tackling sophisticated software projects, the two created Windows a few years later. Microsoft has a net value of $2173.04 billion and has dominated the computer enterprise for more than two decades, making Bill Gates the wealthiest man globally.

 

Amazon

In 1994, Amazon.com started as an online bookstore that operated from a garage at his residence in Bellevue, Washington, where Jeff Bezos and a few employees started developing the software for the site. The test site launched in 1995 and they soon expanded to a two-room house.

Photo: Jeff Bezos

Although it took Amazon more than a year to trade its first book and another two years to make its initial public offering (IPO). Amazon began to flourish and is now one of the world’s largest companies, with a net worth estimated at $1482.17 billion.

 

Apple

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs began in Steve Jobs’ parents’ garage in Cupertino, California, which served as Apple’s original workplace in 1976. They began marketing Apple computers by selling 50 Wozniak’s Apple I computers to a local store for $500 each.

Jobs took the purchase order to a components distributor and placed the order. Today, Apple is the world’s technological leader with a luxurious office in Cupertino dubbed Infinite Loop and a net value of $2662.84 Billion.

 

Still, sleeping on your ideas?

Everything begins as nothing and matures into something magnificent. The idea here is that the most extraordinary ideas know no bounds, as demonstrated by these six major businesses. It all began in tiny garages and has now evolved into multibillion-dollar corporations.

You can start and develop an idea anyplace if you persevere and are enthusiastic about it. These businesses have operated for decades to achieve what they hold now. What set them apart from the crowd was their desire to develop something huge, even if it meant beginning small.

 

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