Do you really need a Garage?

Dec 29, 20194 min read

We see that most of the Billion Dollar Companies started in a Garage, but do we really need a Garage to start a Billion Dollar Company? What was the situation, when they started? What we can learn from them and how we can also become successful in achieving our goals for FY-20!

Let's have a look at what they did in their Garage first!

Amazon - started its operations from Bezos' home garage in Bellevue, Washington in 1994. Although it took almost an entire year for Amazon to sell their first book, the business soon started to grow exponentially and is now one of the biggest companies in the world, valued at almost $300 billion.
Microsoft: Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft, they had a small garage and very few resources to work with. However, something they did have in abundance was their programming skills, using which they built their first operating system and licensed it for $80,000.
Walt Disney and his brother Roy started filming Alice Comedies, part of Alice's Wonderland, in their uncle's garage in Los Angeles back in 1923.
Apple: When a local retailer made a demand for 50 computers, Steve Jobs and Wozniak got all the parts and put together 50 computers in 30 days. They did it at Jobs' parents' garage in Cupertino, California.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google in current YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s garage in September 1998. Starting as just another college project at Stanford, Google is the biggest internet giant today.
William Harley always wanted to design motorcycles. As a 20-year-old, he had come up with the design of an engine to power a bicycle. Then over the next two years, he and his childhood friend Arthur Davidson built their motorcycle in a wooden shed at Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
In 1938, Will Hewlett and Dave Packard started Hewlett-Packard in Packard's garage in Palo Alto, California. Their first product was an audio oscillator, that was ordered by another company on this list, Walt Disney for their motion picture Fantasia.
Mattel, whose most famous product is the Barbie doll, started as a picture-frame company in 1945. The founders, Harold Matson and Elliot and Ruth Handler, started in a garage in Southern California, and to use their leftover materials, started creating dollhouses.
Dell is another college dropout who made it big in the computer business. In 1984, he started designing customized computers for people. Almost a year later, he decided to drop out of college to expand his business, which had turned profitable in the first year itself.
Nike didn't even have a garage, to begin with. If you think a garage is too small a space to start a billion-dollar business, get this, Nike started in the trunk of a car. Yes, that's right. Nike began as Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964 in the trunk of its founders, Phil Knight's Plymouth Valiant. While Knight made shoes, his coach at the University of Oregon, Bill Bowerman tested them on runners. For the first 2 years, it couldn't even find any retailers.
Richard Branson, while in high school in Britain, started a student-oriented magazine. The magazine became more popular than he expected and gave him the confidence to engage in a fully-fledged startup business. The first iteration of Virgin Records was a retail service through which Branson would send vinyl albums through the mail (at a cut price) to any customers who placed an order.
MagLite is also a story of the garage as a space to pursue one’s dreams. In 1950 Tony Maglica, a Croatian immigrant, arrived in Los Angeles, purchased a metal lathe and began machining parts from his home garage. Maglica eventually opened his own machine shop (Mag Instruments). Around this time, he began manufacturing the flashlights that would make him famous. His durable products were used by most American police officers at those times.
Michael Kittredge wanted to create a one-of-a-kind Christmas present for his mother. Using a collection of items he found around the house (most notably, a red crayon for colour), he created a scented candle he hoped his mother would be happy to receive. However, a neighbouring woman saw Kittredge’s creation and was so impressed, that she convinced him to sell it to her. The money she gave him was enough for Michael to buy enough materials to create two additional candles – one for his mother, and another to sell. He operated out of his garage that Christmas season and founded the company properly in a store near the college campus at Mount Holyoke within five years. Yankee Candle Company calls this tale “A True American Success Story,” and it’s difficult to disagree.

My point is :

It doesn't matter where you start from, just doing it will begin a new chapter in learning for you. It will make new neurons in your brain. Success comes from Experience only, and experience doesn't mean that you should be just reading books and never start experimenting with the knowledge you have just gained, you should apply this knowledge to a practical use.

Either you FAIL (First Attempt In Learning) or you get EXPERIENCE.

So if you're planning to start a business, or want to learn something new, or something you have ever dreamed of and still procrastinating, then stop and think: