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Starting in a Garage: Stories of Billion Dollar Empires That Started Small

When you look at your garage, chances are, the thoughts that are running in your mind is how much the price of garage doors in Perth is, because your doors might need to be replaced. But, for some people a garage is more than just a place to store your car.

So, here are some of those people who used their garage as their venue for starting their billion-dollar empire.

Microsoft

Every computer geek already knows the story of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the creators of Microsoft. But, for those who are still unaware of their humble beginnings, Gates and Allen started their business in a garage where they built what would be the most common operating system today.

Eventually, Gates and Allen came up with the idea of developing software rather than focusing heavily on hardware and that’s when Microsoft came to be. When Microsoft became the most used software, it launched Bill Gates into becoming one of the richest people in the world.

Dell

Michael Dell also took the path that Bill Gates took, which is to drop out of college and work in a garage building computers. Dell eventually expanded his business out of his garage when in the first year of his entrepreneurship he was able to sell enough computers to rent his own office.

Google

Google

The all-powerful Google also had its humble beginnings when its creators, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, first came up with the minimalistic search engine in a garage. What’s funny about this duo is that the garage where they created Google didn’t even belong to any of them.

Brin and Page rented a garage from Susan Wojcicki, and it only took them five months to create Google. But when their search engine took off, they didn’t expect it to be that successful.

Google quickly became the most used search engine and Brin and Page discovered that it would need more than two people to take care of the operations. Eventually, Google expanded from Wojcicki’s garage and settled at Mountain View, California.

Google is now valued at $350 billion and is one of the “Big Four.” This refers to the four most successful technological companies including Amazon, Facebook and Apple.

Amazon

Jeff Bezos already had a cushy job working in Wall Street when he decided to pursue his dream of opening an online bookstore. He worked in his garage in Bellevue, Washington creating and operating Amazon, but it took him a while before he was able to sell a book.

When his business started to pick up, he left his garage and opened offices and warehouses across the United States of America. Now, Amazon is the most used online retail store and it has even expanded to producing movies and TV shows for their streaming platform.

Bezos’ business empire made him a billionaire and it even helped him pursue his other ventures like building a space program for civilians. Bezos’ wealth afforded him to fund his personal project Blue Origin, which is a space program that will take civilians for a sub-orbital space flight. Eventually, Bezos overtook Bill Gates and Warren Buffett for the top spot of the wealthiest people in the world with a net worth of $135.5 billion.

These are just some of the most notable people who started their billion-dollar empires in a garage. So, the next time you check out your garage, try imagining yourself becoming the next Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos. You might just come up with the next big thing.

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