Leslie Hocker – Startup Successes To Whet Your Appetite

Sponsored Content: All of us need inspiration in our lives, it is what helps us strive for what we think may be unachievable and it is what encourages us to push ourselves to the limit. With this in mind, I wanted to share some inspiring stories about startups that have found incredible success, even when the odds were stacked against them.

I always like to try and look for inspiration in life for whatever I am doing and with the help of my friend and successful businesswoman Leslie Hocker, we have put this list together to inspire any would-be entrepreneurs out there.

Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg has become the poster boy for success as an entrepreneur ever since the website which he designed and managed during his time at Harvard University, hit our screens for the first time. Zuckerberg began the website Facebook as a frivolous way of rating girls around his college, the idea grew and bloomed into what we know as Facebook today. Zuckerberg has a net worth of $71.5 billion and Facebook plays a key role in the lives of millions of users, not bad for a startup out of university!

YouTube

The monster success that is YouTube was first conceived by three Paypal employees who were looking for better ways in which they could share videos between their friends. The result of the venture was YouTube, a site which they were operating from an office created out of a garage. After the first year went well, the trio was able to seek around $10 million of angel investment to help them push the site. That summer, in 2006, YouTube was the single fastest growing website on the internet and more than 65,000 videos were uploaded and shared. Following this insane summer, Google made an offer for the video sharing site which was accepted and the three sold the website for a cool $1.65 billion, pretty good business for a site that was just over a year old!

Uber

Uber is a well-known brand in the majority of countries over the world and the taxi service operates in 633 cities worldwide and amasses annual revenue of around $6.5 billion. The company was started in 2009 and whilst the founding partners Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp did have some money to play with at the time which negated the need for early investors, many said that their idea of a ride-sharing application would not work. The company overcame the naysayers and in November of 2015, the service completed its 1 billionth ride. Despite the fact that the founders did have money behind them to fund this project, they still overcame the odds to create a service which is loved across the world and which makes an incredible amount of money each year. In just 7 years this startup went from an idea to a global success, truly inspiring stuff.

Where will the next successful startup come from? Work hard and it could very well be you.