Startup stories of the decade: from side projects to million-dollar businesses

Categories
Industry Announcements

From idea
to successful businesses, that’s the motto of the new startup generation. If
you’re reading this blog, you’ve probably had some entrepreneur inspirations in
past, but faced problems such as lack of money, or no support from the environment.
I am glad to tell you that it is fully normal while reading these amazing stories about successful startups to receive an insane dose of motivation.

KFC – Old men motivation story

The founder
of this large company, Colonel Sanders, at the age of 65, was sad and broken. All
he knew he was doing was making a delicious chicken that his friends adored. He
decided to leave his hometown of Kentucky and start selling his recipe in other
states of America. He was constantly rejected by everyone, but he never gave
up. Before the first successful deal, Colonel had to face
1,009 deals. Today, KFC is spread all over the world, and they are one
of the most famous fast-food restaurants.

A great story full of motivation and desire for success.

Dogspot.in – For the love of dog

Passionate dog
lovers, Rana Atheya, Vizal Atheya, and Shalesh Visen, decided in 2007 to make a
site for all dog lovers. The
site started to grow rapidly so in 2009 they gave their best to create a
successful company. The name of their company was written at all dog shows
all over India. In 2011, they decided to enter eCommerce and they were
highly motivated and ready only for success. DogSpot has about 3500 products
listed on the site (of course these were not just dog products) and does close
to 100 deliveries a day with an average ticket size of 35 euros.

A great example of how you can create a successful business out of a passion for something.

AskGamblers – From bartenders to millionaires

The site was created in 2005 – when it was started by Igor Salindrija, a student and web designer who shared a rented apartment with a roommate. Igor’s roommate got a job in a new casino, and Igor soon got a job as a bartender in the same company. He didn’t like his job as a bartender, so he used every opportunity to work on his design projects during working hours.

On one
occasion his boss asked him if he knew anything about making websites. The
company needed someone to build the site and being a designer – Igor was the
perfect candidate. That was a period when he first got acquainted with the
casino industry.

He absorbed
knowledge about the industry, and at one point decided to donate his knowledge
for free through now a well-known casino portal
AskGamblers
, where you
can find casino rankings and ratings of these casinos by other players.

Igor
approached even the smallest detail on the AskGamblers website with great attention,
constantly changing and improving every detail, every pixel of the site. For a
start, there was not enough money to hire people, but there were volunteers, mostly
friends, who gladly changed their jobs in exchange for knowledge.

After 10
years, AskGamblers had 30 employees in Belgrade and made a million profit
annually. During 2016, it was sold for 15 million euros to the company Catena
Media, which is still the most expensive domestic company of a technological
nature, at least when we talk about sales known to the public.

One of the
best ways to build your business is to bring that idea to market in your head
as soon as possible. Why? Because procrastination kills, and speed is what
saves.

Reddit

You’ve probably visited Reddit 100s of times, but do you know the story behind it?

Reddit is one of the most famous
websites where you can create your content. The story begins in
2005 when Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian came up with the idea to create a
website where people would be able to launch various topics and create their content.
At that time, there were too few users and I did not
have enough resources to realize the idea.

They
came up with the idea to create fake accounts and comment on their posts and
thus show people the activities on the site. In a few months, there
was no need to create fake accounts because the site started to grow and every
day there were more and more users.

An
incredible idea and perseverance led them to huge success.

Never give up!

Emi Jay- How a hobby becomes a dream

When
they were 14, Emily Matson and Julianne Goldmark came up with the idea to
design accessories for hair with tapes and headbands. They were incredibly lucky that the mother of
Emily went to the same hairdresser as Jennifer Aniston, a famous American
actress.

 At one event Jenifer
put on one hair accessory made by Emily and Julianne, and a popular fashion
website Marie Claire noticed it. Today, Emi
Jay’s sales reach 10 $ millions. Sometimes luck plays a major role.

Lesson

Persistence
(can) pay off. Unlike sitting at home and whining about the situation in the
country.

Indeed,
your startup will probably not achieve the success achieved by such large
companies that you have read in this article, but that is not a reason not to
try. In the worst case, you will learn something that will help you get a
better job later. Just try, give your best and enjoy it, maybe one day you
will be the subject of articles like this. Never
give up on your dreams, be persistent until you make them come true!

The post Startup stories of the decade: from side projects to million-dollar businesses appeared first on .