From Humble Beginnings To Becoming The Wealthiest Corporations Today, How These Companies Did It

As technology shows rapid advancements, the world is changing fast. While the radical changes are taking place, big corporations are at the forefront of the successful transition to a digital age.

Whether it¡¯s Apple, Facebook, Twitter or Uber, if you look at these companies, they are super successful and we always wonder what they do differently. It bewilders us to see how they skyrocketed from a humble startup to phenomenal success. How do they not hit roadblocks? Why don¡¯t they have problems to get through? What special talent helps them do everything right?

Well, they don¡¯t do everything right. They just excel at things that matter the most. But we won't talk about what makes them so successful, but rather about how they started and what is the history behind their existence.

Let's look at them.

1. Apple

A company that is only going to get wealthier and continue to lead the tech market, Apple is relentless in its quest to be the number one corporation in the world.

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Apple Computers Inc. was founded on April 1, 1976, by college dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who brought to the new company a vision of changing the way people viewed computers.

The richest company in the world today, the California-based firm had to go through years of struggle, various failures and accomplishments which finally led to the way it stands today ¨C the first ever company to be valued at $2 trillion.

So how did the company named after a fruit become so big? Innovation and quality. Jobs and Wozniak wanted to develop a computer for the common man. It didn't take long, as in 1984, they had released the Macintosh, the first successful personal computer to feature a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse. The Mac was a groundbreaking development and changed the landscape for personal computing and would go on to become one of the biggest selling computers of all time.

Apple has not been without its fair share of controversies. In 1985, the company took a drastic measure and fired the man who gave the Mac to the world. But with the company struggling to really make a big dent in the market, it wasn't long before Steve Jobs was back in the fold. The decision turned the fortunes of the company. It didn't only save Apple but also resulted in the company becoming the trillion-dollar empire it is known today. As expected, Jobs continued to innovate, introducing the iMac in 1998, the iPod in 2001, the iMac in 2003, and the iPhone in 2007.

Also read: Apple Is World's Most Valued Company, Overtakes Amazon After Stock Surge

2. Amazon

Our go to place for online shopping and the biggest e-commerce giant in the world, Amazon has revolutionized the retail business.

What is more incredible is the fact that in the course of a single generation, Amazon has grown from fledgling online bookseller to one of the most valuable and powerful corporations in modern history.

Credit: Rex Rystedt

Amazon is the biggest internet-based company in the world. When it started out selling books online in 1994, its owner, Jeff Bezos, knew the only way to succeed online was to grow big, and fast.

The company was propelled by what Bezos called his ¡°regret minimization framework¡±, which described how he would rather participate sooner in the internet business boom during the time, or regret it later.

Bezos soon left his employment as vice-president of a Wall Street firm, and moved to Seattle. He began to work on a business plan for what would eventually become Amazon.com.

After reading a report about the future of the Internet which projected a massive boom for web commerce, Bezos created a list of products which could be marketed online. He narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising products which included: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books.

Bezos finally decided that his new business would sell books online, due to the large world-wide demand for literature, the low price points for books, along with the huge number of titles available in print. Amazon was originally founded in Bezos¡¯ garage in Bellevue, Washington.

The company began as an online bookstore, an idea which took off with discussion with John Ingram of Ingram Book (now called Ingram Content Group), along with Keyur Patel who still holds a stake in Amazon. In the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50 states in the US and over 45 countries.

Within two months, Amazon¡¯s sales were up to $20,000/week. The advantage of an online bookstore meant that there was unlimited virtual (not actual) warehouse: those of the actual product makers/suppliers.

After failing to post profits in its first four-five years, the stockholders began complaining about the company not reaching profitability fast enough to justify investing in.

The turning point finally came. When the dot-com bubble burst at the start of the 21st Century, destroying many e-companies in the process, Amazon survived, and grew on past the bubble burst to become a huge player in online sales. It finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001. Though the profit margin was extremely modest, it proved to skeptics that Bezos¡¯ unconventional business model could succeed.

20 years on from it's breakthrough year, Amazon has scaled to different heights. The company rakes in billions every year and has already crossed the threshold of $1 trillion in market value.

Also read: Jeff Bezos Becomes The 1st Person In The World To Have A Net Worth Of $200 Billion

3. Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation, is a leading developer of personal-computer software systems and applications. Formed on 4th April 1975 by Harvard College dropout, Bill Gates and his childhood friend Paul Allen, Microsoft has now become the biggest software company. It is also one of the most valuable companies in the world.

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After a slow start, Microsoft's big break was in 1980, when a partnership was formed with IBM which resulted in Microsoft providing a crucial operating system, DOS, for IBM PCs. This meant that for every IBM Computer sold a royalty was paid to Microsoft.

In 1990, Gates showed the future plan for Microsoft with the introduction of Windows 3.0. 60 million copies of Windows had been sold now which effectively made Microsoft the sole keeper of the PC software standard.

Microsoft before 1990 was predominantly a supplier to the hardware manufacturers. That was their target market. As technology advanced and personal computers become so popular, the bulk of Microsoft¡¯s revenue was generated from sales to consumers. It was the first software company to reach $1 Billion in revenues. As more and more versions of Microsoft Windows were launched, Microsoft captured a higher market share in the world¡¯s PC (around 90%).

4. Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire Hathaway stocks are the most coveted for their return gains. One of the biggest companies in the world, the Berkshire Hathaway has made a name for itself, thanks to the prowess of Warren Buffet who acquired the company in the mid-1960s.

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The billionaire investor spent his time as the head of Berkshire, turning it into a holding company by buying up troubled businesses and turning them around.

With names like Geico, Dairy Queen, and Fruit of the Loom under its belt, the Nebraska-based company has a market capitalization that exceeds $500 billion.

The company was struggling when Buffett bought his first stocks in it. Even with the company¡¯s troubles, Buffett remained a believer. In 1962, intrigued by the company¡¯s long-term business success and strong balance sheet, Buffett began buying up Berkshire Hathaway stocks, at a price of $7.60 a share.

By 1965, he owned a total of $14 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock, and wound up taking control of the company in May of that year. At that point, the company was a shell of its former self, with only two manufacturing plants and just over 2,000 employees ¨C down from 12,000 in its glory days.

Berkshire Hathaway had made its mark as a textile company (its founders had all owned textile firms in the New England region), but by 1967 Buffett was taking the company on a different path, into the insurance and investment sector.

It was one of the most successful bets in US business history.

Aside from textiles and insurance, the 1970s and 1980s saw Berkshire purchase stakes in companies in industries as diverse as candy/confectionaries and gas and utility companies.

Given the fact that the company has stocks in big corporations like Apple, Coca-Cola, American and many others, it is no surprise that Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest conglomerates in the world.

5. Google

Perhaps the greatest gift of the internet age has been Google. From answering our questions, making recommendation to helping us in our daily lives, Google can do it all.

The company that started as a novel search engine now manages various products with more than 1 billion users worldwide.

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Initially known as BackRub, Google began as a research project of Larry Page, who enrolled in Stanford¡¯s computer science graduate program in 1995. There, he met fellow computer science student Sergey Brin. The two stayed in touch as Page began looking into the behavior of linking on the World Wide Web. Page conceived a system that would crawl the internet to determine which pages were linking to other pages, positing that it could lead to the creation of a new kind of search engine.

Soon, the duo began experimenting with algorithms, to rank search results based on the behavioral patterns.

Inspired by the vast number of links between pages and how their search engine would only become more accurate and useful as the web continued to grow, Page and Brin renamed their PageRank company after the mathematical term googol (a one followed by 100 zeroes).

The duo relocated to the garage of Susan Wojcicki, who would later become CEO of YouTube in Menlo Park, California. They incorporated the company as Google, with a $100,000 investment from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim.

The company has never looked back since. It has become more than just a search engine, with interests in other areas of technology.

Also read: Google Buys Fitbit For $2.1 Billion Officially, After Clearing Antitrust Concerns