When you think of starting a company, you do not need any specific place to start it. Where you are presently is the best place to start your company.
In your room, living room, restaurant, kitchen, anywhere you are, start right there.
I am showing you this so you will know that even when you
have nothing to show, fulfilling your “great” idea is the most important thing
no matter where you start. It is not about your beginning, it is about your
end.
Google
Founders of Google- Larry Page and Sergey Brin started the
company from a garage owned by Susan Wojcicki in 1998. They were forced to sell
the company when it started affecting their academics. Fortunately, Excite (the
company that was meant to buy Google) rejected their $1 million offer and
today, Google is rated the most visited site in the world.
Google later bought back the garage and the home built with it
on their eight anniversary after leaving the place 5 months from their initial
launch in 1998. They intend to keep it as part of its legacy.
Apple
In 1976, a garage in Cupertino California was available for
the establishment of Apple. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne had an
intention to start selling personal computers. Thus the creation of Apple I
personal computer. The computer was first sold in 1976 as a motherboard with a
CPU, RAM and basic textual-video chips. There came the Apple II with color
graphics and then Apple had their breakthrough with the launch of the Macintosh
in 1984.
Apple now have various products- personal computers, iPods,
iPhones and iPads.
Microsoft
Sundown Motel located off Route 66 housed Bill Gates and
Paul Allen when they relocated to New Mexico. There they were working on a
basic program which they developed for a company, MITS
Amazon
In 1994, the world’s largest online retailer Amazon started
in the garage of the house Jeff Bezos and his wife bought. The house is located
at Bellevue, Washington. It began as an online bookstore and Bezos was able to
sell his first book in July 1995.
In his room at Kirkland House, on Harvard’s campus, Mark
Zuckerberg came up with an idea for Facemash. His idea was an app intended to
rate people on their level of attractiveness. He was nearly expelled for this
idea but eventually, the idea brought up what we now know as Facebook which was
founded in 2004.
“On that playground right up there is where I first brought
up the idea, and then we brought it back to the company (Odeo) and demoed it.
We wanted to see everything that was happening. Not just where people were but
what they were doing. I wanted to be able to see the world in real time”
- Jack Dorsey.
Jack Dorsey thought of the Twitter idea at San Francisco’s
South Park and as things progressed, his friends Evan Williams and Big Stone
joined him to form the company in 2006.
YouTube
Dinner party was over and when Hurley and Chen returned to
his office (Hurley’s office), they began thinking of a simpler way to share
videos of the event.
They found their answer at the office and in February 2005
they started developing YouTube. In May, they had their first public review and
in December, they launched YouTube with over 3 million videos served daily.
Reid Hoffman’s living room started LinkedIn in 2003. In May,
the founders wanted to launch so they invited about 350 contacts to join. By
the time the first month of work came to an end, they already had a number of members
totaling 4500 in the network.
LinkedIn then moved to their first “real” office in
Shoreline Road in Mountain View.
Disney
Walt Disney and his brother Roy went to live with their
uncle Robert Disney in Los Angeles and there they were able to start ‘The first
Disney Studio’ in their uncle’s garage. They started with the filming of Alice
Comedies and this became part of the original Alice’s Wonderland.
The company
started in 1932 and the house is just about 45 minutes away from Disneyland
Park in Anaheim, California.
HP
In 1939, the Hp garage (Packard’s garage) in Palo Alto, California,
known as the birthplace of Silicon Valley was where Bill Hewlett and Dave
Packard formed HP with only $538.
They first started with an audio oscillator and one of their
first customers was Walt Disney. Walt Disney bought eight oscillators to
develop the sound system for the movie Fantasia.
When you compare these companies now with where they
started, it is hard to believe they were able to pull through. They were patient,
consistent, disciplined and focused. They could do it, you too can do it.
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