What happens when you get behind the garage doors? Many rise from the garage to the top of Wall Street! It is quite ironic that some of the world’s largest companies have started in the same environment which seems to have a special creative spirit about it, the humble garage. Many people have used their garages for various purposes and have made millions of stunning pieces of work ranging across the spectrum of what is imaginable in the human mind.
Businesses have been started in various places ranging from coal sheds in which Henry Ford built his first prototype car to large rented ornate office buildings. But there seems to be something special to a business that starts off in one of the most humble places, the suburban garage, close to all the tools and equipment. It seems that there is something very special about it which allows people to be very innovative and creative.
Disney
This media conglomerate started off in a humble garage at 4651 Kingswell Ave, Los Angeles, California which belonged to Robert Disney, who was an uncle of Walt and Roy Disney. In the garage that was only big enough to accommodate one car, the brothers started their conglomerate. They changed the garage into a studio and filmed their now famous “Alice Comedies” as part of the Alice in Wonderland series, which was animation films. The Disney conglomerate is regarded globally as the media company which generates the highest gross income.
Microsoft
The world-famous Microsoft Company originated in an Albuquerque garage and was started off by now legendary Bill Gates and his college friend Paul Allen in 1975. They were more interested in programming and operating systems for computers than the development of computers. They decided that their focus should be on software development and not on the development of hardware. This enabled them to develop their first operating system which they sold for $80,000. This enabled them to continue and through sheer hard work and dedication, they were able to launch Windows.
This system impressed the world and today it is estimated to be used by more than 80% of all computers on the globe. This makes it one of the most recognised brand names worldwide and has earned billions of dollars in foreign earnings for the corporation and the USA. In fact, it is quite possible that more than 80% of all articles written worldwide are being done on computers using the Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
Apple
This famous Apple brand started off in 1976 in a California garage located at 2066 Crist Drive, Los Altos, California when three friends named Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne with an interest in computers built their first computer, the Apple I. They built 50 Apple I computers in 30 days which they sold to a store for $500, where these computers were sold as motherboards. They continued and created their Apple II computer. They were interested in computer hardware and software and later sold their Macintosh brand for millions. Today, Apple is famous around the world with their range of products which are regarded as the best by many. They have succeeded in being regarded as the leaders in the technical world with their Mac range of computers and with their personal devices such as iPhones, iPads and iPods being the preferred device of choice. They are also viewed as possibly the first company that will achieve a market value of more than a trillion dollars.
If you are looking for information on the internet you will be told to go and Google it. It is another company which saw its first light in a garage in 1989. The founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, after graduating from Stanford, decided to rent a garage in California from a friend named Susan Wojcicki. They had an idea and wanted a place from which they could work on it. Here they could work almost day and night to create a website on which information was organized and maintained. This would enable people from anywhere in the world to search on a single platform for information. They called their search engine “Google”. This is the most used search engine around the world and has led to the introduction of various applications and other websites like Gmail, Google Maps, Google Drive, etc. The name is recognized worldwide by young and old alike; if you don’t know, just Google it. They offered their project to a company for the amount of $1 million but they declined to buy. Google is currently worth billions of dollars.
Amazon
This is another one of the garage success stories created in 1994 by Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com. It was developed as a bookstore which would be available online. Bezos invested about $40,000 in the creation of the online bookstore. This enabled the ordering, selling and delivering of books to people in different countries across the world. He originally operated in 48 countries. The online store developed from a bookstore with its first book sold in 1995 to what is regarded today as the largest online shop in the world, Amazon.com.
It is a garage thing
There seems to be something in a garage that helps when you are thinking about technical innovations that can change the world and this kept on happening over a reasonable period of time in the creation of successful businesses. The owners’ passion and vision coupled with hard work led to success; it is not how you start the business that counts but how you finish that counts.
