14 Small Businesses That Got HUGE

Young startups and small businesses are often desperate for bank loans or wealthy investors to help get their operations off the ground. However, people have been successfully bootstrapping companies for centuries.

In fact, many of today’s largest businesses began as little more than one person’s dream, with few allies and even less funding.

Let’s explore some inspirational backstories of small businesses that managed to get huge despite their humble beginnings.

1. Apple

Apple’s origin story is practically a modern-day legend. It’s the biggest company in the world today, but the corporate mega-giant was actually born in an unpresuming garage.

In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were two college dropouts when they built the first version of the Apple computer in Jobs’ carport with a box of scraps. It had neither a monitor, keyboard, nor casing at first.

They took the risk because they thought they could make computers small enough for people to fit in their homes and offices for the first time. Obviously, it paid off, as the company now has a market cap of over $2 trillion.

2. Cards Against Humanity

If you’ve ever had a board-game night with your friends, you know there are few better ways to spend the evening than playing Cards Against Humanity. The fill-in-the-blank card game is an easy and fun way to get an entire group to engage with each other.

However, you might not know that a group of friends that’s probably pretty similar to your own founded the company behind the game. Eight high schoolers from a suburb of Chicago created the first version to play at their New Year’s Eve party.

Because of its popularity, they put it on Kickstarter in 2010, and it took off. In 2021, they began looking to sell the company, targeting a $500 million valuation.

3. Chick-fil-A

In 1946, a man named Samuel Truett Cathy opened a diner called the Dwarf Grill in Hapeville, Georgia, just a few miles outside Atlanta. It was a family-owned business, and he ran the restaurant with his brother, Ben.

Two decades later, in 1967, Cathy brought the chicken sandwich recipe and passion for service he cultivated in the Dwarf Grill to a new location in Atlanta’s Greenbriar Shopping Center. He called the restaurant Chick-fil-A.

Eventually, the chicken joint spread across the country. It now has locations in 47 states and is the largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the United States.

4. Craigslist

Craig Newmark launched what was known simply as “Craig’s list” in 1995. As a software engineer, he designed it as a free email service that would describe upcoming events in the San Francisco Bay area of northern California.

It evolved slowly over the next few years, gaining popularity and adapting to facilitate various communal activities. However, it wasn’t until 1999 that it was incorporated and began taking fees for job and apartment listings.

Of course, Craig Newmark eventually became a billionaire, and Craigslist generated an estimated $660 million in revenue in 2021. 

5. Disney

Walt Disney’s career began with the Kansas City Film Ad Company in Missouri, where he worked for two years and met his friend, Ub Iwerks. Two years later, they founded the Laugh-O-Gram Films studio together to make cartoons based on fairy tales.

After producing the animated short, Alice in Cartoonland, in 1923, Disney filed for bankruptcy. With nothing in his small business bank account, he left the state to pursue his dreams and make a name for himself in Hollywood.

His brother, Roy, came with him, and the surprise success of Alice in Cartoonland convinced them to continue their previous venture. However, it wasn’t until 1928 that they created Mickey Mouse, which they then used to take over the animated market.

The Walt Disney Company has come a long way since then, and now it owns everything from popular live-action motion pictures to massive theme parks. Its market cap is roughly $181.5 billion.

6. Facebook

Facebook is yet another business giant formed by a group of school friends. Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes founded the company in 2004 while they were students at Harvard.

The first version, Facemash, was an online service that allowed Harvard students to rate each other’s attractiveness. The university shut it down quickly, but its popularity inspired Zuckerberg to try again with TheFacebook.com.

The site let users post pictures and personal details, and its popularity quickly grew. Soon, students from other schools joined, and advertisers began paying for exposure on the site. By 2005, it became known simply as Facebook, and the rest is history.

Facebook went public in 2012 and now has 2.96 billion monthly active users. The parent company, now known as Meta Platforms, has a staggering market cap of $206.53 billion.

7. Groupon

You know Groupon. It’s the website that’s been tempting you with email offers for discount foot massages since you browsed its options that one time six months ago. However, it wasn’t always as famous as it is today.

In 2007, Andrew Mason created a website called The Point to organize local groups for various purposes in Chicago. It eventually spawned a spin-off page called Groupon, which advertised for local businesses by offering limited-time deals.

The first deal was for Motel Bar, a restaurant downstairs from the company office. It was so successful that other Chicago businesses soon hopped on the bandwagon, and the popularity spread organically.

By 2010, Groupon was in cities across the United S