Companies, bands, actors, and even TV show hosts were once just ideas and dreams in people’s heads till they made specific moves that began to manifest those intangible aspirations into reality. Their actions differ from many other people with similar hopes but do nothing or do the wrong things.
Still, some people started quite big, entering their own field with enough energy to propel them into the limelight. Others began slowly, building from scratch over long stretches of time before finally taking off. Many businesses kicked off this way and in one of the humblest places possible: the garage. With tenacity, patience, and grit, they built up the sprawling empires they have today.
1. Apple
Apple may be the most valuable technology company in the world today and one of the most profitable. Still, in the 1970s, the company was launched out of Steve Jobs’s garage in Los Altos, California. Both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the co-founders of the company, created the influential company in this garage, and now the company’s current net worth stands at around 1 trillion dollars.
2. Disney
This mega company was once a tiny little set-up in Walt Disney’s uncle’s garage in 1923. Walt and his brother Roy Disney moved in with their uncle Robert to start the first Disney studio in his garage. In this humble space, they began filming the first parts of the Alice Comedies, which were based on Alice in Wonderland. Eventually, Walt’s animated character, Mickey Mouse, caught the world’s attention and became a big hit. From there has come boundless success, earning the company an estimated net worth of $171 billion today.
3. Microsoft
Microsoft, in its infancy, was proudly headquartered in a small garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There, Bill Gates and his childhood friend Paul Allen founded Microsoft in 1975. Though they didn’t have a lot of money, they were versed in programming and used their skills to build their first operating system, licensing it at $80,000. From there, they went on to dominate the personal computer market.
4. Mattel
Today, this toy company has a presence in 35 countries and territories, and its products are sold all over the world. This huge company may be at the top of the toy-making food chain today, but it began on simpler terms. Harold Matson and the couple, Eliot and Ruth Handler, started the company in a garage in 1945. The company went on to produce iconic toys like the Barbie doll, which is one of the company’s most successful toys in history.
5. Dell
Michael Dell’s entrepreneurial days began as a pre-med student at the University of Texas, where he sold upgrade kits for personal computers. In 1984, after customers made orders, he built computers for them in his garage, rather than the other way round of making the products first and marketing them to them. He made enough money from trading PC upgrade kits and add-on components that he decided to drop out of school and incorporate the company as “Dell Computer Corporation.” Soon after, he relocated the company to a business center in North Austin.
6. Google
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin started working on their idea to build a powerful search engine from their dorm rooms at Stanford University, California. They were Ph.D. students at the time and moved into a garage office space to continue their work. The search engine they created was named “BackRub” but luckily, BackRub was later changed to “Google,” and the company took off from there. It is amazing how a company that has done so much for the modern-day internet and is indispensable today started from such a small place.
7. Amazon
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com as an online bookstore completely run from his home garage in Bellevue, Washington. Though the business was online, he stored goods in his garage, conducted transactions, and sent shipments through the garage. Today, Amazon is one of the biggest online marketplaces in the world. Jeff Bezos is one of the richest men in the world, and the company has a market cap of $1.55 trillion. It tells us that small beginnings are not to be taken lightly.
8. Mag-Lite
Tony Maglica was a Croatian immigrant who escaped to America during World War II. He taught himself English and worked off jobs till he could make enough money to rent a garage in the Los Angeles area that served as his one-man machine shop. From there, he manufactured precision parts for industry, aerospace, and the military and soon built a reputation for brilliant work. Soon after incorporating his company in 1974, he designed and manufactured a new kind of flashlight, and his company has been associated with great, well-built flashlights ever since.
9. Hewlett-Packard
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, the founders of the HP hardware brand, started the company in a rented garage with an initial investment of $538. Their HP Garage in Palo Alto, where everything began, is known today as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. They formalized their partnership in 1939, tossing a coin to determine if their company would be called Hewlett-Packard (HP) or the other way around. What a difference it would have made had their company been called (PH).
10. Yankee Candle Company
In 1969, 16-year-old Michael Kittredge accidentally made a scented candle in his garage out of melted crayons. It was a gift to his mother, but the neighbors noticed and liked the scents, so he turned it into a business in his garage. In a short while, Kittredge outgrew the garage and moved the company to an old mill in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The rest, after that, is history.
Source: Reddit.
