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Famous Garage and Dorm Room Startups
SLIDE 10J
Amazon Pretty bold name choice for a company that started in a small Bellevue, Washington garage. Jeff Bezos is the big-thinking entrepreneur who in 1994, had the foresight to recognize the massive opportunity in online sales. When the company started, he received only about a half-dozen orders per day and answered emails himself. Today, Amazon is valued at $145 billion. Apple It’s not a (sub)urban legend. Apple Computer really did startup in a garage around 1977. Entrepreneurs Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, at the time 21 and 26 years old respectively, started building computers in Job’s parents’ garage in Cupertino, California. Today Apple is the world’s most valuable tech company, worth $465 billion. Disney This one goes back, but its worth mentioning because Walt Disney was one of the all time greatest and most creative American entrepreneurs. In 1923, Walt and his brother Roy, used their uncle’s Southern California garage to create their first movie studio. Walt was 22 and Roy 29. Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) 1984, 19-year-old Michael Dell began building and selling custom-built personal computers out of his dorm room on the University of Texas - Austin campus. Dell’s low cost computers resonated with other students and the public. At age 20, he formed Dell Computers which is now one of the largest computer companies in the world. Google It’s hard to believe that Google actually started in a garage, but in 1998 two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, used a friend’s garage as a computer lab to develop a page rank algorithm which evolved into the fast and efficient search engine we all use. They were 25 years old at the time. Google is worth just about $395 billion. Nike Nike started on the University of Oregon campus in a place even smaller than a dorm room: the trunk of a car! After graduating, track athlete Phil Knight returned to his alma mater to work with his former coach on a design for a running shoe that was lighter and faster. He was about 25 years old when they started selling the shoes out of his car. Their company was originally called Blue Ribbon Sports. In 1978 they officially renamed it Nike. Dropbox In 2007, 24 year old college student Drew Houston founded the popular file hosting service Dropbox in his MIT dorm room because he could never remember to bring his flash drive to class. Dropbox is a file hosting service with cloud storage, file synch, and all sorts of other great uses. Just a few years later he’s worth a little over a billion dollars. PRODUCT PREVIEW
175 THE 21st CENTURY STUDENT’S GUIDE TO FINANCIAL LITERACY
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