If you think that your home-based business will never outgrow its current status, then you are probably not confident enough in your own abilities. Every major business we know at international level started small. There was no benevolent millionaire or angel investor to help out celebrated entrepreneurs and give them a cash boost to open a big business.
Instead, young and enthusiastic people decided to pursue their dream, try out their ideas, and develop products or services which they believed would benefit a lot of people. Some of them probably failed, but we have a lot of instances where the hard work and dedication, combined with an innovative idea, created a solid and successful business which outgrew its humble beginnings in ways that not even their creators had imagined.
So, in this article we want to offer you inspiration, the impulse to dream and plan ahead, and the chance to see much more than a small home business in your entrepreneurial pursuit. Keep your mind open and ready for more, just like these iconic entrepreneurs did when they were running their business from a garage.
1. Apple
Apple is without doubt one of the most beloved and valuable brands in the world. Whenever a new iPhone model is about to be launched on the market, people queue in front of stores and literally sleep on the streets for days and nights just to make sure that they are the first ones to get their hands on the phone.
Yet, when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak first started the company called Apple Computers back in 1976, they were college drop-outs and working from a garage in Steve Job’s parents’ house. Their first product, Apple I, was sold for $500 to a local store and, after a bitter rejection from IBM, they finally broke through when the company Macintosh decided to buy their computer model.
2. Disney
During the roaring 20s, in 1923, a young cartoonist recently fired from a newspaper for lack of imagination and talent at drawing (a failure on the same scale as Decca Record’s rejection of The Beatles) was using his uncle’s garage to create an animated series named Alice Comedies. The young cartoonist was Walt Disney and, together with his brother Roy, he created and shot without any other assistance the series of cartoon episodes which soon attracted the interest of Universal Studios.
And the rest, as they say, is history. Today Disney is one of the largest conglomerates of franchised businesses covering entertainment parks, merchandise, films, cartoons and other forms of entertainment for children and families.
3. Amazon
Do you remember your last purchase from Amazon? Of course you do, since you probably received the parcel days ago. And if you perform a simple Google Images search, you will see the impressive warehouses and sophisticated automated sorting systems which make sure that every delivery arrives on time. Yet, when Jeff Bezos started his business in 1994, it was a simple online bookstore operated from a garage in Washington and Bezos held his meetings with potential suppliers at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore. He made an investment of $40,000 in a starter stock of books and made the first sale in July 1995.
Now Amazon is, without exaggeration, the biggest online store in the world – delivering everything from furniture to cosmetics, books, DVDs and home appliances.
4. Microsoft
Currently, 80% of the computers in the world run the operating system developed by Microsoft – Windows. However, when the company was first founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, their first software was licensed for only $80,000 to IBM. The story of Microsoft has many parallels to that of Apple, except that Gates and Allen focused on software instead of hardware. But the origins of the most popular operating system in the world are still in a simple garage in Albuquerque.
5. Google
Google has become such a necessary presence in our lives, that people no longer say “search online for X”, but “Google it”. When it was first developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they were working from a garage rented for $1,700 per month from Susan Wojcicki (who would become senior vice president of the company until January 2014). Within one year since its creation, the Google search engine became the number one choice for users worldwide, leaving behind the former power players Yahoo, Excite and Altavista.
As you can see, the biggest and most valuable brands we have nowadays evolved from a small business run from a garage. This means that with the right approach, and the right amount of business acumen and dedication, your home-based business could grow, too, and become a major company.