Introduction
Ray Campbell writes …
Starting your own company might seem like a far-fetched idea at some point, but there comes a time when the amount of knowledge we acquire in course of our education triggers a vision of our commercialization of the wisdom we managed to soak up.
Companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google are the leading examples of student entrepreneurship success; however, many other corporate giants started as dorm room ideas.
So what springs the wheels within a student’s mind to develop a unique, prosperous idea? Is it enough to hear a motivating speech or spin some other genius’s work in a better direction? In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the most successful college startups and what made them unique to the point of global success.
Yahoo
The Titan of web services, Yahoo started as a website directory created by Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Flo, who needed a way to keep their favorite websites in one place and organized by hierarchy. In 1996, the company went public and the value of Yahoo stocks grew more than 600 percent by 1998.
Simply because Yahoo offered a unique type of service at the right time, the company managed to grow so rapidly that it was almost certain it will take over the internet and become the synonym for online services. It didn’t take long for Yang and Flo’s baby project to outgrow its original purpose and it soon became everyone’s favorite email server, as well as a recognizable homepage for all categories of users.
No matter if you were searching for online games or professional speech writers, Yahoo was your starting point. And if you needed a free email account in the late 90s, there were not many dilemmas which mail server you were going to choose.
With the internet boom in the early 21st century, Yahoo saw competition growing stronger, especially Google, which later on stole Yahoo’s thunder and now reigns supreme. Nevertheless, the Stanford dorm room website directory still exists and holds a reputable market share.
WordPress
According to the latest statistics, more than one-third of the internet runs on WordPress, the world’s leading Content Management platform.
At the first glance, one would think that this web giant is a child project of a large international internet conglomerate; however, the idea of WordPress blossomed within the head of Huston University student, Matt Mullenweg with a significant amount of help from Mike Little.
Officially, WordPress is owned by Automattic, a web development company owned by Mr. Mullenweg, which also owns the rights to WooCommerce, Jetpack, Akismet, and a series of other software solutions intended for web design development and support.
Time Magazine
Did you know that the world’s most popular weekly news magazine started as a college project by two Yale students, Britton Haden and Henry Luce, who wanted to create a weekly magazine that featured short stories so that people could read them on the go, without spending a lot of time in order to inform themselves about the most important events of the week.
Since the first editions in the early 20s, Time Magazine became of the most influential mass media provider and later become an international brand. In 1990, Time Inc. became part of Time Warner Corporation, now publishing online articles, as well as more than 2 million printed editions every week.
Dell
In 1984, the University of Texas, Austin student Michael Dell, decided to start a computer company building IBM-compatible PCs using stock components within his dorm room. His initial financial injection was the product of his family investment of $1000 which allowed him to build his brand of computers and sell the first unit for $795; the model was named PC Turbo.
Within a year, Dell managed to gather $73 million in revenue, and that’s when seasoned venture capitalist, Lee Walker, to mentor the growth of the company that we know now as a multibillion-dollar computer industry leader. In 1992, Fortune magazine named Michael Dell, University of Texas drop out, the youngest Fortune 500 company CEO of all time.
Conclusion
It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without companies like Dell, Yahoo, or others listed in our article simply because they shaped the environment we live in today.
These pioneers took the best of what their academic institutions had to offer and developed powerful brands just by clinging on to their vision.
It’s virtually impossible to imagine the hard work and dedication that stood behind the success of each of these companies; however, we can compare it to the number of competitors who tried to reach the same heights and failed.
Bio:
Ray Campbell is a professional writer dedicated to promoting student entrepreneurship and the development of new business ideas for young people.
His work includes producing articles for numerous online publishers where he aims to deliver well-researched information that offers actionable and meaningful advice to the audience interested in gathering startup ideas.
As a writer, Ray tries to bring fresh stories that are easy to understand and fun to read.
Info sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(magazine)
https://automattic.com/about/
https://money.cnn.com/1998/07/23/redherring/redherring_kingmaker/
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