From the garage on the courage: success stories of the largest IT-businesses, starting from scratch
Today, almost every Internet user knows people like Jack Ma, Richard Branson, Michael Dell and, of course, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. If at least a part of these names says nothing to you, then you certainly heard about the companies of Alibaba Group, Virgin Group, Dell, Valve Corporation, Microsoft and Apple. These companies are the giants of the market, which themselves, in many respects, have formed. And they began many of them literally from the garage.
One of the flagships of the Chinese business, the company Alibaba Group, which owns the online store AliExpress, the popular in China payment system AliPay, and even part of Yahoo !, was founded not by some privileged son of a member of the Chinese Politburo or another lucky person born with a silver spoon in his mouth "And a simple teacher of English. The history of the Alibaba Group, and later on the main “flea market” in the world, began with Ma's trip to the United States in 1999. It was there that he became acquainted with the Western Internet and came to the conclusion that this can be earned. Upon returning to his homeland, Ma created the Alibaba Group, a directory of Chinese trading companies.
Like many others on our list, Ma started with the support of his friends, relying on his naked enthusiasm and his own flair. The company did not do well until Ma and his team received $ 25 million from Japanese investors, who appreciated their neighbors' ideas. In 2010, AliExpress was opened - as a response to the desire of people to buy any goods from the comfort of their homes. There is no point in telling the subsequent history of AliExpress: Ma is now the richest man in China, his company is developing dynamically, investing in various areas and constantly increasing momentum.
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Although Branson is not the richest man on our list, but his story can be called a textbook. The future Sir began his entrepreneurial experiences back in his school years, publishing newspapers, growing Christmas trees for sale, and breeding budgerigars. Later, the future billionaire turned his attention to the audio business and publishing, and the Virgin Group empire began with a small shop where informal young people gathered to listen to music and hang out.
Notable in Branson is not his craving for outrageous and world records, but how he managed to succeed, starting from the start, like a typical underdog - the newborn label Virgin Group lived through contracts with nounaym groups in the hope that one of them would “shoot ". For example, his label revealed to the world guys like the Sex Pistols.
Today he has already released a book of memoirs, in which he talks about the emergence of the empire of the Virgin Group, one of the first to talk about space tourism, even tried himself as the owner of an airline, which, however, mostly burned his money, but did not generate income. One thing is for sure: it all began with fir trees and budgerigars, and over 400 companies under the brand of the Virgin Group and a fortune of $ 5 billion.
The founder of the software giant Microsoft for many years kept the title of the richest man in the world, only recently giving way to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Gates' first great success was MS-DOS. Everyone has heard that Gates bought DOS for a pittance, which provided the foundation for his corporation.
But in fact, it all started much earlier - in 1972. This stage of the biography of Bill Gates does not particularly extend, although if you analyze the facts, it was he who became the defining moment for the businessman himself and the rest of the world, who now uses Windows.
In 1972, Gates, together with his friend Paul Allen, founded the company Traf-O-Data, whose goal was to create an integrated system based on primitive computers and software of its own design. The Traf-O-Data systems, as the name suggests, were planned to be used as an analyzer and flow controller for road transport. As conceived by Gates and Allen, the US road service should have become interested in developing them, but something went wrong. The first enterprise, founded by two friends, went bankrupt.
Perhaps their story would have ended there, but after a few years, in 1975, Gates and Allen, at the suggestion of the latter, wrote an interpreter of the BASIC language for the Altair 8800 computer. And first, Gates called MITS and stated that they had an interpreter , and only then they created it with Allen.
The story of the birth of Apple - one of the most popular examples of "garage startup" - is in this part just a common myth. One can argue for a long time who actually made a decisive contribution to the creation of Apple Corporation — manager Jobs or Wozniak’s engineer — but one thing is certain: she was not born in the garage at all.
In fact, Wozniak worked on his own project in the walls of one of the laboratories of HP. Moreover, Wozniak first honestly offered the fruits of his work to the employer, and after refusing to hand it over to Apple in the person of Jobs. Garage in the period of the formation of Apple friends still had, but it was used as a gathering place and parties, and not as a workshop.
But the really “garage” one can be considered the first joint development of Jobs and Wozniak: the “blue box” is a device that sent tones to the telephone network and allowed to call from an “alien” number. And it was not their original idea: the idea of ​​the “Blue Box” was seen by friends in the magazine Esquire in a note about the hacker Captain Crunch. They collected the first “box” for fun, and only then Jobs offered to sell them for $ 150 apiece. By the way, Jobs himself believed that Apple began with this student's handicraft, and not with the Apple I computer, which Wozniak created much later.
Although the surname of Dell is at the hearing of the whole world due to the fact that Michael Dell is the only one on our list who decided to call the company by his name, but his story is known to the public least of all. But it is closest to the archetype of the "garage startup". But this is not entirely accurate: Dell began in his room in a student dormitory, where he rebuilt and upgraded IBM computers with their subsequent resale. Word of mouth along with advertising in the newspaper did their job: the room soon became a full-fledged workshop, and Dell was loaded with orders to the maximum.
Then, as a first-year student, Michael Dell dropped out of school and founded PC's Limited, which would later become Dell Computer Corporation. Unlike the other "colleagues in the shop", Dell did not have to reconsider his approach to work, and his business orientation was based on client orientation. From the first day in the small office he filmed, Dell worked according to the principle “Sell the user not what was in stock, but what he needs. And cheaper than others. " Initially, Dell was engaged in modifications to computers manufactured by IBM, adding functions necessary for users to order. The habit of working "to order" Michael Dell eventually projected onto entire factories for the production of personal computers.
However, if it seemed to you that this is an example of business success, with which the entrepreneur started, then this is not so. Like Gates, Branson, Jobs and dozens of other businessmen, Dell earned the first serious money ($ 18,000) by selling a subscription to a local newspaper for the newlyweds. It was then that he developed the idea of ​​an individual approach (all the letters with the commercial proposal were original, for a particular pair), which helped him build the Dell Computer Corporation.
Combines the stories of "those who could" coincidence of factors: a strong idea and strong marketing.
Gates, Jobs and all the rest managed to be in the right place at the right time - the time of the explosive growth of technology, when the world was just getting acquainted with the phenomenon of "personal computer" and preparing for the appearance of the Internet.
The work of Michael Dell from the first day was based on the principle “do what people want, and not what you want yourself.” The world had a need for a new operating system, and Gates gave the MS-DOS world, and then Windows. Branson discovered such talents as the Sex Pistols, and Jack Ma - satisfied the need for an online catalog of stores with Chinese-made goods.
However, each success story in the shadows are dozens, if not hundreds of thousands of "garage" enterprises, which eventually burned out. The typical “survivor's mistake” is not to think and not to talk about those whom the dolphins were pushing away from the coast.
In order to build an empire, a good idea and aptitude are not enough — each time this unimaginable set of circumstances is often independent of the future billionaires themselves. In the vastness of the network there are many "stories of failure", which, like mushrooms after rain, climbed out the past few years.
Sensible engineers and inventors are much more than you can imagine. On Kickstarter alone, there are over 130 thousand successfully financed projects , the fate of which is not known to anyone. The reasons for the stupor "after Kickstarter" can be different - but not the last of them is the one that not every Wozniak met his Jobs. Therefore, the majority of successfully launched technical projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo are closed after fulfilling their obligations to the backers, without finding additional sales channels.
A very heavy burden of marketing falls on inventors and engineers, which not everyone can handle, and frankly, not everyone wants to mess around with it, hoping that "somehow it will be decided once." At the same time, they have no place on Amazon or AliExpress - a few months without sales simply kill a young business, and it’s almost impossible to break through with something truly unique through the numerous products of non-manufacturers that simply copy the solutions of successful brands. Only a part of startups go through this “death valley” and find retailers, cooperate with other small chains and retailers, trying to somehow survive.
The indie-electronics market is ripe for a solution that instrumentalizes the transition of projects from the garage and niche industries to confident mass sales. This concept is proposed by the project Hamster Marketplace , founded by the Russian manufacturer of children's tablets PlayPad Denis Bulavin. Working in the niche electronics segment, he saw the demand for a site that would allow other independent manufacturers to find their customers and expand sales without a devastating struggle for a limited number of shelf and storefront windows with large vendors and manufacturers of non-original goods. Pre-sale tokens Hamster Marketplace will begin in December. To not miss the start of registration, subscribe to the newsletter on the project website .
If you want to get more information about Hamster Marketplace first hand, welcome to our Russian-language channel in Telegram .
Jack Ma
One of the flagships of the Chinese business, the company Alibaba Group, which owns the online store AliExpress, the popular in China payment system AliPay, and even part of Yahoo !, was founded not by some privileged son of a member of the Chinese Politburo or another lucky person born with a silver spoon in his mouth "And a simple teacher of English. The history of the Alibaba Group, and later on the main “flea market” in the world, began with Ma's trip to the United States in 1999. It was there that he became acquainted with the Western Internet and came to the conclusion that this can be earned. Upon returning to his homeland, Ma created the Alibaba Group, a directory of Chinese trading companies.
Like many others on our list, Ma started with the support of his friends, relying on his naked enthusiasm and his own flair. The company did not do well until Ma and his team received $ 25 million from Japanese investors, who appreciated their neighbors' ideas. In 2010, AliExpress was opened - as a response to the desire of people to buy any goods from the comfort of their homes. There is no point in telling the subsequent history of AliExpress: Ma is now the richest man in China, his company is developing dynamically, investing in various areas and constantly increasing momentum.
')
Richard Branson
Although Branson is not the richest man on our list, but his story can be called a textbook. The future Sir began his entrepreneurial experiences back in his school years, publishing newspapers, growing Christmas trees for sale, and breeding budgerigars. Later, the future billionaire turned his attention to the audio business and publishing, and the Virgin Group empire began with a small shop where informal young people gathered to listen to music and hang out.
Notable in Branson is not his craving for outrageous and world records, but how he managed to succeed, starting from the start, like a typical underdog - the newborn label Virgin Group lived through contracts with nounaym groups in the hope that one of them would “shoot ". For example, his label revealed to the world guys like the Sex Pistols.
Today he has already released a book of memoirs, in which he talks about the emergence of the empire of the Virgin Group, one of the first to talk about space tourism, even tried himself as the owner of an airline, which, however, mostly burned his money, but did not generate income. One thing is for sure: it all began with fir trees and budgerigars, and over 400 companies under the brand of the Virgin Group and a fortune of $ 5 billion.
Bill Gates
The founder of the software giant Microsoft for many years kept the title of the richest man in the world, only recently giving way to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Gates' first great success was MS-DOS. Everyone has heard that Gates bought DOS for a pittance, which provided the foundation for his corporation.
But in fact, it all started much earlier - in 1972. This stage of the biography of Bill Gates does not particularly extend, although if you analyze the facts, it was he who became the defining moment for the businessman himself and the rest of the world, who now uses Windows.
In 1972, Gates, together with his friend Paul Allen, founded the company Traf-O-Data, whose goal was to create an integrated system based on primitive computers and software of its own design. The Traf-O-Data systems, as the name suggests, were planned to be used as an analyzer and flow controller for road transport. As conceived by Gates and Allen, the US road service should have become interested in developing them, but something went wrong. The first enterprise, founded by two friends, went bankrupt.
Perhaps their story would have ended there, but after a few years, in 1975, Gates and Allen, at the suggestion of the latter, wrote an interpreter of the BASIC language for the Altair 8800 computer. And first, Gates called MITS and stated that they had an interpreter , and only then they created it with Allen.
Steve Jobs
The story of the birth of Apple - one of the most popular examples of "garage startup" - is in this part just a common myth. One can argue for a long time who actually made a decisive contribution to the creation of Apple Corporation — manager Jobs or Wozniak’s engineer — but one thing is certain: she was not born in the garage at all.
In fact, Wozniak worked on his own project in the walls of one of the laboratories of HP. Moreover, Wozniak first honestly offered the fruits of his work to the employer, and after refusing to hand it over to Apple in the person of Jobs. Garage in the period of the formation of Apple friends still had, but it was used as a gathering place and parties, and not as a workshop.
But the really “garage” one can be considered the first joint development of Jobs and Wozniak: the “blue box” is a device that sent tones to the telephone network and allowed to call from an “alien” number. And it was not their original idea: the idea of ​​the “Blue Box” was seen by friends in the magazine Esquire in a note about the hacker Captain Crunch. They collected the first “box” for fun, and only then Jobs offered to sell them for $ 150 apiece. By the way, Jobs himself believed that Apple began with this student's handicraft, and not with the Apple I computer, which Wozniak created much later.
Michael Dell
Although the surname of Dell is at the hearing of the whole world due to the fact that Michael Dell is the only one on our list who decided to call the company by his name, but his story is known to the public least of all. But it is closest to the archetype of the "garage startup". But this is not entirely accurate: Dell began in his room in a student dormitory, where he rebuilt and upgraded IBM computers with their subsequent resale. Word of mouth along with advertising in the newspaper did their job: the room soon became a full-fledged workshop, and Dell was loaded with orders to the maximum.
Then, as a first-year student, Michael Dell dropped out of school and founded PC's Limited, which would later become Dell Computer Corporation. Unlike the other "colleagues in the shop", Dell did not have to reconsider his approach to work, and his business orientation was based on client orientation. From the first day in the small office he filmed, Dell worked according to the principle “Sell the user not what was in stock, but what he needs. And cheaper than others. " Initially, Dell was engaged in modifications to computers manufactured by IBM, adding functions necessary for users to order. The habit of working "to order" Michael Dell eventually projected onto entire factories for the production of personal computers.
However, if it seemed to you that this is an example of business success, with which the entrepreneur started, then this is not so. Like Gates, Branson, Jobs and dozens of other businessmen, Dell earned the first serious money ($ 18,000) by selling a subscription to a local newspaper for the newlyweds. It was then that he developed the idea of ​​an individual approach (all the letters with the commercial proposal were original, for a particular pair), which helped him build the Dell Computer Corporation.
About those who are not lucky
Combines the stories of "those who could" coincidence of factors: a strong idea and strong marketing.
Gates, Jobs and all the rest managed to be in the right place at the right time - the time of the explosive growth of technology, when the world was just getting acquainted with the phenomenon of "personal computer" and preparing for the appearance of the Internet.
The work of Michael Dell from the first day was based on the principle “do what people want, and not what you want yourself.” The world had a need for a new operating system, and Gates gave the MS-DOS world, and then Windows. Branson discovered such talents as the Sex Pistols, and Jack Ma - satisfied the need for an online catalog of stores with Chinese-made goods.
However, each success story in the shadows are dozens, if not hundreds of thousands of "garage" enterprises, which eventually burned out. The typical “survivor's mistake” is not to think and not to talk about those whom the dolphins were pushing away from the coast.
In order to build an empire, a good idea and aptitude are not enough — each time this unimaginable set of circumstances is often independent of the future billionaires themselves. In the vastness of the network there are many "stories of failure", which, like mushrooms after rain, climbed out the past few years.
Sensible engineers and inventors are much more than you can imagine. On Kickstarter alone, there are over 130 thousand successfully financed projects , the fate of which is not known to anyone. The reasons for the stupor "after Kickstarter" can be different - but not the last of them is the one that not every Wozniak met his Jobs. Therefore, the majority of successfully launched technical projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo are closed after fulfilling their obligations to the backers, without finding additional sales channels.
A very heavy burden of marketing falls on inventors and engineers, which not everyone can handle, and frankly, not everyone wants to mess around with it, hoping that "somehow it will be decided once." At the same time, they have no place on Amazon or AliExpress - a few months without sales simply kill a young business, and it’s almost impossible to break through with something truly unique through the numerous products of non-manufacturers that simply copy the solutions of successful brands. Only a part of startups go through this “death valley” and find retailers, cooperate with other small chains and retailers, trying to somehow survive.
Marketplace for new Jobs
The indie-electronics market is ripe for a solution that instrumentalizes the transition of projects from the garage and niche industries to confident mass sales. This concept is proposed by the project Hamster Marketplace , founded by the Russian manufacturer of children's tablets PlayPad Denis Bulavin. Working in the niche electronics segment, he saw the demand for a site that would allow other independent manufacturers to find their customers and expand sales without a devastating struggle for a limited number of shelf and storefront windows with large vendors and manufacturers of non-original goods. Pre-sale tokens Hamster Marketplace will begin in December. To not miss the start of registration, subscribe to the newsletter on the project website .
If you want to get more information about Hamster Marketplace first hand, welcome to our Russian-language channel in Telegram .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/339658/
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