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Where 10 Famous Companies Got Started

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  1. Website: Facebook
    Founder: Mark Zuckerberg
    Place started the business: In his Harvard Dorm Room
    The birth of Facebook is related to Zuckerberg’s appetite for hacking.
    He got into limelight when he refused $1 billion offer from Yahoo. Later on he sold a 1.6% stake in Facebook to Microsoft for $240 million, raising the valuation to $15 billion.
  2. Website: Google
    Founder: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
    Place started the business: In a garage
    Larry and Sergey started on a name BackRub. But Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google — a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.
  3. Website: Runescape
    Founder: Andrew Gower
    Place started the business: From a bedroom in his parents’ house in Nottingham.
    He has involved in coding for games since his childhood. He had a penchant for dungeon gaming. He initially started RunEscape as a hobby, and later monetized his website and turned out to be a successful business venture.
  4. Website: PopCap Games
    Founders: John Vechey, along with Brien Fiete and Jason Kapalka
    Place started the business: In his office
    John Vechey, along with Brien Fiete and Jason Kapalka founded Popcap games in the year 2000. They earlier worked with internet gaming sites like flipside and pogo. Their first gaming product was Bejeweled, which became a big hit, and received numerous awards.
  5. Website: Threadless
    Founder: Jack Nickell along with Jacob Dehart
    Place started the business: From a studio apartment
    Jack Nickell along with Jacob Dehart ( both college dropouts ), started threadless when they were still working on their regular job. Both the partners put a modest $500 as their initial investment. Now the company has annual revenue to the extent of $50 million.
  6. Website: Biz Chair
    Founder: Sean Belnick
    Place started the business: From his bedroom
    He started with $500, with an initial inventory of 50 products. Now the company has 75 employees and sells more than 25000 products online. He sells office furniture, home furniture, school furniture and medical equipment in online shop. Microsoft, Google and American Idol are among some of his notable clients.
  7. Website: Digg
    Founder: Kevin Rose
    Place started the business: In his apartment.
    Originally was going to be called “Diggnation”, but Kevin Rose wanted a simpler name. He chose the name “Digg”, because users are able to “dig” stories, out of those submitted, up to the front page. The site was called “Digg” instead of “Dig” because the domain name “dig.com” had been previously registered by the Walt Disney Internet Group.
  8. Website: YouTube
    Founder: Chad Hurley
    Place started the business: In his office
    After that fateful dinner party, where Hurley and Chen wanted to create a simpler way to share their videos of the night, they immediately went to work at the office creating the answer. “In February, we started developing the product,” says Hurley. “In May, we had our first public preview. And in December, we officially launched YouTube. By that time we were serving over three million videos a day.”
  9. Website: eBay
    Founder: Pierre Omidyar
    Place started the business: In the home of Pierre Omidyar
    There aren’t many sites on the Internet that can claim the success that eBay has enjoyed. The first name eBay used was Echo Bay Technology. When the company tried to register the domain name echobay.com, they found that it was already in use. They shortened the name to eBay.com and the Website was born.
  10. Website: LinkedIn
    Founder: Reid Hoffman
    Place started the business: In the living room
    LinkedIn was officially founded in 2003. The site was launched on May 5th (affectionately referred to by employees as “Cinco de LinkedIn”) when the five founders invited about 350 of their most important contacts to join. At the end of the first month in operation, LinkedIn had a total of 4,500 members in the network. LinkedIn’s first “real” office was on Shoreline Road in Mountain View.