- A lot more than bands are started in garages.
Companies like Amazon and Google are worth
billions of dollars and have become
a regular part of most people's lives,
but they definitely didn't start that way.
In fact, them and eight others of the largest companies
on the planet all started from very humble beginnings
in someone's garage.
- [Steve] We've got the very first computer we ever built
long before we even started a company.
- Their story of success from very humble beginnings
are stories you're going to want to hear
because they're absolutely incredible.
So, let's get right into it.
These are the 10 most valuable companies
that started in a garage.
Number one is Disney.
In 1920, Walt Disney was a trained artist
and was working as an apprentice commercial illustrator,
but when he was laid off, he went into business for himself,
eventually creating the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studios
with his brother, Roy O. Disney.
On October 16th, 1923, their very first studio
was created in their uncle's garage,
where they created the Alice comedies,
which years later inspired the feature length film,
Alice in Wonderland.
Many animated films were made in that garage
until the company's name was changed
and the new Walt Disney Studio opened
an actual commercial space in January of 1926.
It was a long journey for Disney to achieve big success,
but he definitely did.
Today, the Walt Disney company is one of
the largest media conglomerates in the world,
with TV networks, film and TV production studios,
merchandise, a music division,
and theme parks around the globe.
All of this from an animated mouse, oh boy!
Number two is Amazon.
If your friend told you he was going to
quit his job on Wall Street to make it big
selling books out of his garage,
you probably would think he was a little bit cuckoo,
but that's exactly what founder of Amazon,
Jeff Bezos, did on July 5th, 1994.
Bezos was worried that he was going to miss
the dot com boom, so he decided to start
what was originally an online bookstore called Cadabra.
He defined his move as a regret minimization framework
and founded his risky business in his own garage
in Bellevue, Washington,
and boy did that gamble pay off.
Amazon today is a company that does
way more than sell just books.
Labeled as both an electronic commerce
and cloud computing company,
Amazon even operates a hugely successful
production company and video streaming service.
♫ Amazon.com's sure got a lot.
♫ Just so you know, here's what's hot.
♫ Digital camera, Razor scooter, Leatherman tools.
♫ We've even got the George Foreman grill for you.
As of 2015, the corporation surpassed Walmart
as the most valuable retailer in the United States
and has now grown to be the fourth largest
public company in the world.
Not too bad for a guy whose friends considered him
a nut job for wanting to sell books out of his garage.
Number three is Google.
Okay, I definitely owe a lot to this company,
mostly because they're the reason
that you can see my face right now.
The legendary Larry Page and Sergey Brin
founded Google on September 4th, 1998
while they were PhD students at Stanford University.
Their humble start began in a garage
that they rented from their friend, Susan Wojcicki.
If that name sounds familiar, that's because she's now
the CEO of YouTube, also owned by Google.
It was in that garage in Menlo, California
that they developed a digital search engine,
their objective being to make all of
the information on the web accessible
to anybody through a single portal.
In the 18 years since its inception,
Google has grown into one of the most
innovative companies on the planet.
Now defined as a multinational technology company
specializing in internet services,
Google has a colossal campus called the Googleplex
in Mountain View, California.
It's now owned by Page's tech conglomerate, Alphabet,
and Google.com is still the most visited site on the web.
From just those two guys in a garage,
it now employs over 57,000 people
and is estimated to be worth over $82 billion.
Number four is Harley Davidson.
That's right, Harley Davidson was not created by
some existing vehicle company
who just wanted to get into motorbikes.
No, instead, they created the motorcycle.
In 1901, 20-year-old William S. Harley
was thinking up a way to improve his bicycle
when he came up with the idea to add a small engine to it.
With the help of his childhood friend, Arthur Davidson,
they built their first motorbike out of
their friend's shed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
It was actually a coin toss that decided
whose name went first.
Obviously, Harley won, and the company
officially became Harley Davidson in 1903.
It was operated out of this little shed garage
until the first Harley Davidson manufacturing plant
opened in 1906 in the very spot that
the company's current corporate headquarters now stands.
Harley Davidson really took off during the first World War
when the Army actually used the bikes in the field,
and today, it remains one of the most recognizable
motorcycle manufacturers in the world,
employing nearly 6,000 employees.
Number five is Mattel.
In January of 1945, Harold Matson and Elliot Handler began
a picture framing business that today has grown
into one of the biggest toy companies in the world.
Now, you might be thinking,
"Wait, what, picture framing?"
Well, yeah, it seems unlikely,
but Matt and Elliot founded Mattel,
the name being a combination of their names
in a garage in southern California,
where they made and sold picture frames.
They ended up taking a turn into toys when,
not wanting to waste any wood, they would use the scraps
from the frames to create dollhouse furniture.
When Matson left the company because of poor health,
Handler's wife, Ruth, took over the company
and refocused totally on producing toys.
Since then, Mattel has created some of the most well-known
and beloved toys by generations of kids,
the most successful of course being the woman
that started the one name trend back in 1959,
the one and only Barbie.
- [Voiceover] Have you heard what's happened?
Barbie's changed.
Barbie's new and different.
She's the very same size,
but now she comes with a groovy outdoor look.
- And today, Mattel is a multinational
toy manufacturing company with a presence
in more than 40 countries worldwide
and employs over 31,000 people.
Number six is Hewlett Packard.
Google might get all the glory,
but they're not the only billion dollar tech company
that was started by Stanford grad students.
Google's predecessors were William Redington Hewlett
and Dave Packard,
who founded Hewlett Packard on January 1st, 1939.
After receiving a $538 investment,
they used a one car garage in Palo Alto, California
to produce a line of electronic testing equipment.
The very first successful product that they had was
a precision audio oscillator that they were able to
sell for much less than their competitors,
and their first big customer, Walt Disney,
who used the oscillators to stabilize the sound in Fantasia.
Of course, HP is still in operation today,
creating affordable and innovative computer technologies.
The company currently has over 315,000 employees
and their products can be found all over the world.
But as for the garage that they started in,
it's now a museum.
In fact, it's widely considered to be
the birthplace of Silicon Valley.
Number seven is Microsoft.
Billy Gates might look like a nerd but he a hella rich nerd.
Today, Microsoft software is estimated to
be on 80% of computers, but it didn't start that way.
On April 4th, 1975, Microsoft was founded
by friends and Harvard dropouts, Bill Gates and Paul Allen,
who named the company using the words
microcomputer and software.
Working out of a garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
they developed a computer language interpretor software,
Basic, for the microcomputer, the Altair 8800.
By the 1980s, Microsoft had taken over
the personal computer software market with MS-DOS
and totally changed the game with
the invention of Windows in 1985.
Now, this seems like ancient history now,
but it really wasn't that long ago that these two dropouts
changed the way that we communicate forever.
Today, the company's headquarters has outgrown
their garage by, you know, just a little bit,
as they now have room for their 114,000 employees
in multiple buildings spread across a number of countries.
Number eight is Mag-Lite.
The American dream was founded on the idea
that even if you come from nothing,
you can achieve greatness if you just work hard enough,
and in 1950, that's exactly what Tony Maglica set out to do.
Originally from Croatia, Maglica immigrated to California
to learn the machinist trade.
Eventually, he was able to save up enough money
to start his own machine shop and began manufacturing
precision parts out of his garage in Ontario, California.
The business grew into Mag Instrument Inc,
and although it may not be the most recognizable name,
you've likely seen their products in the hands of
some important people in real life or on TV.
In 1979, Maglica introduced the Mag-Lite flashlight,
and that is when everything changed.
This bad boy has been referred to as the Cadillac of
flashlights, and is still the standard issue flashlight for
police officers and other emergency personnel
in the United States.
The heavy durable make of the Mag-Lite made it a dependable
go-to weapon as a last resort when needed for self-defense.
In other words, smashin' some skulls.
Today, Mag Instrument Inc. is a multimillion dollar company,
has over 700 employees, and is the standard issue flashlight
for all police officers in the United States.
Number nine is Dyson.
James Dyson's first invention, the ball barrow,
was designed after the front wheel of his wheelbarrow
kept getting stuck in the mud.
He replaced the wheel with a ball and voila,
the first seed of Dyson Limited was planted.
Working from his garage in Cotswold, England,
Dyson designed and built the first prototypes of
the Dyson bagless vacuum.
Now, at the time, UK investors were not interested,
but he ended up making his mark when his g-force cleaner won
first prize at the 1991 International Design Fair in Japan.
Using the money that he made from
selling the license for his design,
Dyson opened Dyson Appliances Limited on July 8th, 1991,
and in 1993, he moved out of his garage
and opened his first factory and research center.
Today, Dyson Limited has grown into
a billion dollar company.
You can find Dyson machines being sold in over 70 countries
and the company has over 7,000 employees working for it.
Life used to suck, and then he ended up
making a fortune off of things that suck.
That's kind of ironic.
And number 10 is Apple.
It's pretty hard to argue that Apple
hasn't completely changed the world as we know it.
These days, it's hard to find a home
where someone's not talking on their iPhone,
listening to a song on their iPod,
or surfing their web on their MacBook or iPad.
The multinational technology company today
has its headquarters situated in
a giant campus in Cupertino, California,
with a number of other offices, call centers,
manufacturing plants, and even research labs
all around the world.
But what makes it even more impressive is that
Apple was actually started in a suburban garage.
On April 1st, 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
started the company in the garage of
Jobs' parents home in Los Altos, California,
but they hadn't been in the garage long
when they finally developed the first
personal computers to be sold, the Apple I and the Apple II.
After the company grew quickly,
they moved into a real office,
and now they're a global powerhouse in computer software,
online services like iTunes, and consumer electronics.
So those were the 10 most valuable companies
that started in a garage.
But I'm curious, which company on this list
is your favorite that you use the most?
Or, is there another company that you know
that started in a garage that's also worth
millions or even billions of dollars?
Leave your response below,
because I'll be reading through them
and I'm going to pin the best comment to the top.
Before you go, I have really good news for you guys.
Starting Monday, January 30th,
I'm beginning a brand new upload schedule of daily uploads
from Monday to Friday at exactly 3PM eastern standard time.
Yes, that means every weekday at 3PM eastern standard time,
you can expect a brand new video from me.
I hope you guys are as excited for this as I am.
I'm totally stoked for this new schedule,
but as always, have a great day,
and I will see you Saturday. Bye.