The Top 5 companies of our time that started in a garage!

1. 5 FORTUNE
500S FROM
GARAGELAND
THE TOP 5 COMPANIES OF OUR TIME THAT
STARTED IN A GARAGE!

2. 1. APPLE

3. The quintessential “garage-to-riches” story of corporate
America is definitely Apple. Steve Jobs, Steve
Wozniack, and Ronald Wayne started their business in a
garage, and together they built one of the first prototypes of
the Apple personal computer. By way of startup
capital, Jobs sold his VW bus for $1,500 and Wozniack
used $250 from the sale of his programmable HewlettPackard Calculator. Soon, money wasn’t a problem, as
Mike Marrakula and Xerox invested in Apple, and when the
company went public, it quickly grew to join the Fortune
500.

4. 2. GOOGLE

5. Google started in a garage on September 7th, 1998, with a
staff of three. Shortly after opening Google in their
garage, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin moved
out of their dorms, raised $1 million, and incorporated the
Google name. For five months, Google worked out of a
friend of Page and Brin’s garage, with the two wunderkinds
working on the search engine’s algorithm throughout this
period. In March 1999, the company moved out of the
garage, and eventually found its way to the “Googleplex.”

6. 3. WHOLE FOODS

7. College dropout John Mackey and his partner Renee
Lawson Hardy were evicted fro their apartment for using it
as storage for their store, and began living at the store full
time. After borrowing $45,000 from friends and family for an
initial investment, they incorporated and began expanding
through mergers and acquisitions. It was just a matter of
time, and today they are listed on the Fortune 500.

8. 4. MATTELL

9. Matt Matson and Elliot and Ruth Handler started the toy
company in a garage, where they made dollhouse furniture
out of scraps from their picture frame business. Fifteen
years after their founding, they went public, released their
Barbie doll, and made toy history.

10. 5. AMAZON

11. Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage in
Bellevue, Washington, where he shipped book orders
across the United States and to 48 countries. An initial
investment of $140,000 was used to make the website
more user-friendly, after which Amazon incorporated, went
public, and expanded into selling a wide variety of
toys, electronics, tools, and hardware, entering the Fortune
500.