ArThe world’s leading giant companies have interesting founding stories. Thanks to the ideas that arise as a result of these stories, companies that everyone knows today are making billions. Interesting stories such as being stranded on the streets of Paris in snowy weather, not being able to pay the rent of the house he was staying in, and even fighting with the guide on a school tour inspired the establishment of these companies.
One of the most interesting stories is the founding story of Uber, the ride-hailing application founded in San Francisco, USA. Uber, which also provides taxi services in Turkey, was founded after an incident that happened to Travis Kalanick and Garet Camp. Two business people were trying to get to the conference they were going to attend in Paris one night. However, after hours spent under snowfall, they could not find a taxi. Then a bright idea came to the couple’s mind. If they couldn’t find a taxi, they could touch the phone screen and call a taxi. Starting with this idea, Kalanick and Camp founded the company in 2009. Today, Uber’s market size, which provides services in 65 countries, has reached 95 billion dollars.
American Procter & Gamble is a consumer products company that employs more than 100 thousand people and has reached a size of 200 billion dollars. The founding story of the company is also quite interesting. William Procter produced candles and his sister-in-law’s husband, James Gamble, produced soap. However, these two business people could not get along. They were in constant competition to sell products they produced from the same raw material, animal fat.
One day, their father-in-law invited their son-in-law to dinner. The father-in-law of two businessmen really wanted the fight between them to end. So at dinner I asked them, “Instead of competing, why don’t you join forces?” He presented his offer. Thus, the world-famous P&G company was born in 1837. Today, the company has dozens of brands such as Gillette razors, Crest care products and Head & Shoulders shampoos. Many new products were introduced to the world within P&G. For example, Victor Mills, a P&G employee who did not like washing his grandchild’s diapers, invented disposable diapers.
Most people know the story of Apple and Microsoft. However, Google’s founding was somewhat overshadowed. 21-year-old Larry Page was about to start his master’s degree in computer engineering at the famous Stanford University in the USA. The task of showing Page around the department was given to another student, Sergey Brin. However, things went south on the trip and Page and Brin got into an argument. They both hated each other. “I was disgusted with him,” Page later said of Brin in an interview.
However, later, when Brin saw that Page was a computer genius, he started to spend more time with Page at school and the ice thawed. Page has long wanted to develop an easy-to-use internet search engine. Page then started working with Brin and tried the search engine BlackRub, the ancestor of Google, for the first time in 1996. Today, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is a technology giant worth $1.7 trillion. Both Page and Brin are in the top ten on the list of the world’s richest people.
Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, who moved from New York to San Francisco, were having trouble making ends meet. The duo found themselves unable to pay their rent. In 2007, they learned that there was no room left in the city’s hotels due to an upcoming tourism fair. Many people were still looking for a place to stay. This gave them a bright idea. They immediately bought an air mattress from the market and put it in the spare room at home. Moreover, they set up a website called Airbed & breakfast to rent the room. Their first customer was a 30-year-old Indian. Then their business grew and the Airbed&Breakfast site turned into Airbnb, which became the accommodation giant. Airbnb, which rents out empty houses and rooms around the world, has reached a size of $90 billion.
Sources: Medium, Uber, Get Paid, LinkedIn
How were giant companies established? They stayed on the street, they fought, they couldn’t pay the rent…