5 Unbelievable Success Stories of Big Companies That Were Once A Start-up
Today we are ordering online food, booking our cheapest flight and hotel, and doing may more things, we are using several different kinds of apps and service every single minute of the day. But have you ever thought about who innovated these kinds of ideas, well it’s just not only, these innovations are multibillion dollars companies?
Today I’m going to share 5 Unbelievable success stories, which will surprise you a lot.
#1 Airbnb
Airbnb is an online platform, where people rent out their homes through this website, to those who are looking for accommodation in nearby. Currently, the company is operating service more than 81,000 cities and 191 countries. The company headquarter is located in San Francisco, California.
Story – Airbnb founder story is one of persistence, fear and most of all hustle. In 2007 Airbnb founder Brain Chesky and his friend Joe Gebbia moved to San Francisco. Since they didn’t have a job, they were having trouble paying their rent. So, they started looking for a way to earn extra money. They observed that all hotel rooms in San Francisco were booked, as the local industrial design conference attracted so many visitors. The observation gave them an idea. They purchased some airbed and put on a site called “Air Bed and Breakfast.” The idea was to give visitors a place to sleep at a night and offer breakfast in the morning.
However, the journey was not that easy. To get the company afloat, they had to sell cereal boxes for six months. After plenty of rejections, they got it first time funding of USD 112 million.
#2 Alibaba.com
Alibaba is a Chinese E-commerce marketplace which provides consumer to consumer, business to consumer, and business to business sales service via a web portal, as well as e-payment services, and cloud computing services. The company is known as the world’s largest retailer and e-commerce company that server more than 200 countries.
Story- Jack ma is the founder of Alibaba who is the role model of youngsters. His story is total rags to riches. Jack ma was born and raised in a poor family during the regime of communist China. He failed his university entrance exam twice and was rejected from an of the job including KFC. He didn’t have knowledge of the internet or programming, in spite of it, he was captivated by the internet world.
Initially, He stared two internet ventures which didn’t succeed. In 1999, he finally started alibaba.com. He stared looking investors and convinced them to invest in his vision. Later the business started booming all over the country. Today Jack is the richest person in the Chain.
#3 Instagram
Instagram is one of the most renowned social medial platforms that allows to share photo and video, chat with followers, and many more. The company was founded by Kevin Systrom who graduate from Stanford University. During school, he learned coding by himself. Initially, He was working on an app that was more & less a cross between Foursquare and Flickr.
Story- you might know that Mark Zuckerberg liked to hire Kevin while he was undergraduate but he refused the opportunity as he wanted to finish his graduate degree. Kevin and his friend Mike Krieger spent around 8 weeks aggressively to develop Instagram. Finally, on 6 Oct 2010, they introduced publicly.
After two hours of Instagram going Live, it started falling down due to the rush of traffic. The app becomes popular within 24 hours on IOS. Within nine months, Instagram had 7 million users, which also included the highly-influential tech-loving celebs such as Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Justin bibber and many more.
#4 Pinterest
Pinterest is another popular American Social media web for discovering information globally like recipes, home and style inspiration, and may more. On the platform, you can create an account and upload your own information as Gif, video, and image. According to Wikipedia, Pinterest has more than 300 million monthly active users.
Story- Pinterest’s success story is one of the most persuading ones. Ben Silberman launched this innovative idea and struggled with it even 90% of people didn’t like it at all. According to India Today, within four weeks, it had around 900 users. It completely flopped idea and no one like to invest in it for a long time.
Ben was raised by a doctor and was suggested to follow the same path. He got into Yale and later he figured out he didn’t want to be a doctor. After holding a graduation degree from yale, He joined Google in sales and support. Doing a non-engineer job in Google, he didn’t much like the culture and felt out of place, which made him work for himself and found Pinterest. Later Pinterest started growing up when a famous blogger recommended it.
#5 UBER
UBER Tech, Inc., generally called Uber. It is an American multinational company that offers peer to peer ridesharing, ride service hailing, and food delivery service. The company is located in San Francisco. Currently, the company is operating more 63 countries and 785 metropolitan areas. As of 2019, Uber is estimated to have more than 110 million worldwide.
Story- In 2009 founded by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick. The idea came when the founder of the company Travis Kalanick wasn’t able to find a cab in Pairs to get to a conference. The incident made him envisioned it as a way to lower the price of black -car facility at the touch of a button.
Since his two previous star-ups failed, it was very difficult for Travis to convince the investors to have confidence in him. However, as he launched the idea in San Francisco, it became a super success! After SF, they expanded the service in different cities, then Across the other country. Currently, the company is making it the most appreciated privately held tech company all over the world.
These 5 Success stories have different timing and situation but one thing is most common that No matter how much you have failed or what situation living in, you have to keep taking action until you reach your goal.
