Many of the giants that dictate the way tech-at-large rolls today had modest starts during their early days. Some attributed the success of the companies or their founders to great foresight, knowing the "right" people, and in many cases, being in the right place at the right time (aka just lucky, I guess).
In truth, many of these founders "knew" a few things very early on: they knew they were going to open their own company one day, they knew what they were doing was going to be big one day, they were very driven (nothing was going to stop them) and they took a lot of risks most of us wouldn’t be comfortable taking today.
Many of the key people from these companies are enjoying the spoils of their hardwork back then, today, and are actively fuelling, investing and mentoring many modern-day startups. Let’s take a look at the classic pictures of these founding giants, dug up from the Internet and get a peek into how it was for them when they were starting out as nobodies.
Recommended Reading: 40 People Who Changed The Internet
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs with an Apple I, 1976. Wozniak built the Apple I (which was essentially a circuit board) by hand. Jobs helped sell the design and eventually it went on sale in July 1976 for $666.66 per piece. Apple I was replaced by Apple II a little over a year later. (Image Source: Computer History Museum)
Apple II Team, Stevens Creek 1978. A picture of the Apple II team at their small Stevens Creek office. Jobs is seen arguing with Michael Scott (second from the right), the first president of the company, a common occurrence. The team is flanked by the Apple II computers on racks in the background. (Image Source: Business Insider)
Steve Jobs and Woz, circa 1980. Woz works on an Apple II computer while Jobs looks on. The Apple II was designed primarily by Woz as a hobby, and was the first 8-bit home computer to be a commercial success. It sold at $1,298, offering only 4kb of RAM, color graphics, rudimentary sound support, and heat management in the form of a switched-mode power supply, a solution provided by Rod Holt. (Image Source: Gamasutra)
Apple HQ in Cupertino, 1981. The rainbow Apple logo was created in 1977 and used until August 1999, before it was replaced with more modern monochromatic alternatives. We see here the early logo displayed proudly in front of the Apple’s Cupertino office, back in 1981. Michael Scott the first CEO of Apple in February 1981 fired 40 employees abruptly, and as a consequence was replaced by Mike Markkula (who hired him), before quitting in July the same year. (Image Source: The History of Apple)
Apple Lisa Team, 1983. Apple Lisa was the first PC to offer graphical UI to individual users. Its development by a team of more than 90 individuals, was reported to cost around $50 million to the company. Jobs’ intention of killing the Macintosh project in favor of the Lisa project was effectively prevented by Markkula. While there was controversy surrounding the name Lisa, Jobs would later admit that it was named after his daughter. (Image Source: The History of Apple)
Apple co-founders, Apple IIc launch 1984. Steve Jobs, John Sculley (of sugared water fame) and Steve Wozniak showing off the Apple IIc computer. It was the fourth model in the Apple computer series but the first portable computer to come from Apple. Nonetheless, it weighed in at 7.5 lb (3.4 kg) and lacked a built-in battery and display. (Image Source: TheRichest)
With John Sculley in Central Park, 1984. Jobs with John Sculley, the youngest ever Pepsi president, during their better days. Between them lies the Macintosh. After luring Sculley in with the infamous pitch, "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want to come with me and change the world?â€, Jobs and Sculley would eventually be involved in a power struggle that would change the face of Apple, and Jobs himself. (Image Source: CNN)
Fortune Magazine, Job’s Palo Alto home 1991. In case this is news to you, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates go way back, right up to the late 70′s when Microsoft was providing software for Apple II. In 1991, Fortune magazine invited Gates (already a billionaire) and Jobs (still with Next, pending return to Apple) for an interview to discuss the future of PCs. Do check out the interview transcript to see how similar the two are and why they are made for each other. (Image Source: CNN Money)
Steve Jobs & Gil Amelio at Apple Town Hall, 1996. Apple employee, Tim Holmes shared these photos of the night Steve Jobs announced his return to Apple. The images were taken with the Apple QuickTake camera which Holmes said Jobs "killed" the same year he returned. You would too if your digital camera turns black jackets, purple. (Image Source: Tim Holmes)
Microsoft co-founders, 1975. In 1975, Bill Gates had dropped out of Harvard to start Micro-Soft (the hyphen was thankfully dropped a year later) with Paul Allen who was working with MITS. They wrote software for MITS-owned Altair microcomputers but by late 1976 Microsoft has detached itself from MITS to write software for other systems. Despite their differences in their later years, the two recreated this old photo last year. (Image Source: Microsoft)
First 11 Microsoft members, 1978. The first 11 members of Microsoft Corporation featuring Bill Gates at the bottom left corner and Paul Allen at the bottom right corner, right before the team moved from Albuquerque to Seattle. (Image Source: Lumq)
Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980. Ballmer dropped out of Stanford Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft where he would spend the next 33 years of his life. He became CEO of Microsoft in 2000. Ballmer will be retiring in 2014 when a replacement has been chosen by a special committee within Microsoft. (Image Source: Envetech)
Microsoft co-founders, 1981. 1981 saw the year MS-DOS was distributed commercially with IBM PC, which took the market by storm. Since Gates held on to the operating system license, it gave him the clear to release the OS on any other IBM-PC compatibles, which as Gates had predicted, proliferated the market. The following year Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an immune system cancer. (Image Source: Seattlepi)
Bill Gates introducing Windows 1.0, 1983. The very first version of Microsoft Windows was almost named Interface Manager, but Windows was the name that stuck. IBM was hesitant to distribute their computers with Windows because they had their own OS, Top View, to release, albeit without any GUI features. Gates was also up against lawsuits by Apple’s lawyers who claimed that he infringed copyrights and patents owned by Apple. (Image Source: History of Computers)
Young Bill Gates, 1985. Young Gates seemed relaxed here considering he was up against lawsuits by Apple over his latest breakthrough invention, Microsoft Windows. After the release of Windows 1.0, Gates counter lawsuits from Apple by agreeing to license some of Apple’s features and later on, by claiming that Apple stole the GUI features from Xerox. (Image Source: The Guardian)
Bill Gates, 1985. Remember these? You could fit a whole OS in one of these babies back in 1985. Here, Gates shows off the 16-bit graphical operating environment Windows 1.0 in a 192kb floppy disk. In 1987, Microsoft 2.0 was released for sale at $100 per copy. It featured overlapping windows and icon designs that were predecessors to the GUI we are used to today. (Image Source: Gizmodo)
Windows 3.0 launch, 1990. Bill Gates showing off the newly released Windows 3.0 that came with a Windows Software Development Kit (SDK), allowing developers to focus more on writing third-party programs that can run on Windows. Three million copies were sold in the first year, and Windows became a hit. (Image Source: Windows)
Microsoft releasing Windows 95, 1995. Windows 95 was released to resounding success, selling 1 million copies in 4 days. Jay Leno opened for Windows 95 during its launch event. Microsoft became mainstream and Gates became the richest man in the world and remained in the rich list every year, ever since. Two years later, he would invest $150 million in Apple. (Image Source: Business Insider)
Founders of Adobe Systems, 1982. Academics Charles Geschke and John Warnock worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the late 70′s before forming Adobe. Their goal and motivation then was to accurately translate text and images onscreen to a printed page. They would eventually develop the PostScript technology. (Image Source: Hyperbate)
Adobe founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock with Steve Jobs, 1985. Steve Jobs had urged the duo to adapt the newly written PostScript for use as the language for driving laser printers. In 1985, Apple LaserWriter was the first printer to ship with PostScript, which eventually sparked the desktop publishing (DTP) revolution. (Image Source: Photoshop Blog)
Intel founders and its first hire, 1978. Andy Grove, Intel’s first hire (left) and the co-founders, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore (both of traitorous 8 fame) together with a design of the 8080 microprocessor in 1978. Grove had heard that the two were leaving Fairchild Semiconductor (where the 3 of them worked) and just decided to tag along. Intel would eventually moved from the memory chip business to microprocessors and the rest is history. (Image Source: NPR)
Intel Santa Clara facility, 1970. Employees stand outside the Santa Clara facility in 1970 where the Intel 4004, a 4-bit CPU was manufactured. In 1972, the 8-bit microprocessor 8008 was produced. Initially designed for use in calculators, the microprocessors would eventually work its way into the gaming console market in the 1990s and the PC market in the 2000s. (Image Source: Intel Free Press)
IBM chairman and president with an IBM 360 computer, circa 1970. IBM had helped NASA put men on the moon and in 1971, CEO Thomas Watson Jr. (left) stepped down from his post, ending a half-century long’s worth of Watson family leadership. Thomas Vincent Learson retires as president two years later and is replaced by Frank T. Cary. (Image Source: Haverford)
IBM 7090 computer, 1961. The IBM 7090 (also known as IBM 709-T) was a mainframe computer that was sold at $2.9 million per system (inflate that by 10 for today’s prices). It was faster than its predecessor, and relatively cheaper. The IBM 7094 was used during the Apollo moon landing in 1969. (Image Source: Wikipedia)
HP founders, 1963. Here’s a picture of founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard who often visited their manufacturing floor. Hewlett-Packard started out by working on a wide variety of electronics and only focused more on computing hardware in the 1960′s. (Image Source: Computer History Museum)
The headquarters of Samsung, 1930s. Founded by Lee Byung-chull in 1938, Samsung Sanghoe as it was known, traded groceries and made its own noodles. The company diversified to wool after the Korean War and eventually to insurance, textiles and even securities. In the late 1960s and beyond, Samsung ventured into electronics, semiconductors, LCD screens and mobile phones (world’s largest maker in 2012). (Image Source: Wikipedia)
Lee Byung-chull: founder of Samsung Group, 1976. Lee Byung-chull (center) listens to an employee explain a computer system in 1976 while his son (left) looks on. Samsung, today, is run by many of Lee Byung-chull’s descendants and he was reported to have sat in on hiring interviews of up to 100,000 of Samsung’s employees. Lee died in 1987 at the age of 77. (Image Source: koreatimes)
Samsung 5 millionth TV (most in the world) produced, 1978. Today, Samsung continues breaking records and limits with its many feats in a variety of industries. It comprises of 80 companies and has around 427,000 employees. Its revenue is equivalent to 17% of South Korea’s total GDP. (Image Source: Samsung Tomorrow)
Oracle Founders celebrate Oracle’s first anniversary, 1978. In this photo, Oracle co-founders, Ed Oates, Bob Miner and Larry Ellison celebrate Oracle’s first year with the company’s first employee, Bruce Scott. Ed Oates and Bruce Scott would eventually leave the company, and in 1993 Bob Miner passed away from lung cancer. Oracle would eventually be the second-largest software maker after Microsoft, making CEO Larry Ellison one of the richest person on the planet. (Image Source: meetup)
Michael Dell, circa 1987. Michael Dell started assembling and selling IBM PC-compatible computers in 1984 from his dorm room in the University of Texas and eventually dropped out to continue making computers. In 1985, the "Turbo PC" was invented, which made the company $73 million in the span of a year. The company became Dell, only in 1988. (Image Source: Statesman)
DELL production facility, circa 1989. Michael Dell is seen here at the company’s production facility in Austin circa 1989. The company had gone public in 1988 and was expanding, growing into a billion-dollar enterprise. Having started the company at the tender age of 19, Michael Dell would eventually become the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company in 1992. (Image Source: Inc)
Google co-founders, California 1999. Larry Page’s parents were both computer science professors at Michigan State University so it was no surprise that he would follow in their footsteps in earning a PhD in Computer Science. Together with Sergey Brin, a fellow PhD student, they worked on "BackRub", a research project to "count and quality each backlink in the Web". The photo shows the duo at Menlo Park where they set up their first office, before they moved out to Palo Alto in early 1999. (Image Source: CNN Money)
The original Google platform, 1998. Here is where Google started â€" unassuming, lowkey â€" within the confines of Stanford University. Brin and Page had developed the PageRank algorithm to give importance to a web page based on backlink data. This eventually became the fundamentals of their search engine. In 1998, Google was formed. (Image Source: Pingdom)
First Google Team, California 1999. Google’s early employees at the company’s first Palo Alto office numbered in at 34. Marissa Mayer said that she and Paul Buchheit hung that Google poster. Of the group only 7 remained with the company, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Omid Kordestani, Joan Braddi, Susan Wojcicki, Urs Hölzle and Salar Kamangar who all hold senior management positions within Google. (Image Source: Business Insider)
Mayer joined Google in June 1999. Marissa Mayer was with Google for 13 years before going on to become President and CEO of Yahoo!. She has since been busy transforming Yahoo internally (telecommuting controversy) and acquiring new web property for the company, such as Tumblr for $1.1 billion and Summly for $30 million. She is listed as one of the most powerful women in business by Forbes and Fortune. Marissa Mayer is 38. (Image Source: Creative Intelligence)
Yahoo! founders, circa 1994. "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", was far from an attempt to change the world. "Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web" was essentially a web directory, rather than a search engine. But it gained popularity fast and soon everyone was using Yahoo! as a starting page to the Internet. In 2008, Microsoft offered to acquire Yahoo at $44.6 billion, an offer which was declined. Today, Yahoo has a stock market value of $34 billion and is set to profit from Alibaba’s pending IPO. (Image Source: TheRichest)
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, 1994. In 1994, Jeff Bezos left his VP job at a Wall Street firm to try to sell things online. He narrowed a list of what could be sold online from 20 to the big 5: CD, computer hardware, software, videos and books. In 1995 Amazon.com started selling books. Much to chagrin of the stakeholders, the company would not see profit until the 4th quarter of 2011. Today, Amazon rakes in more than $60 billion in revenue per year and employs more than 100,000 staff all over the world. (Image Source: CNN Money)
eBay Founder with CEO, circa 1998. Originally AuctionWeb, eBay was part of a personal site by Iranian-American Pierre Omidyar. By the time his service provider asked him to upgrade to a business account because of the high incoming traffic, Omidyar had to hire someone just to handle the incoming checks. In 1998 the company went public; then in 2002, bought Paypal, and later Skype in 2005. The company pulls in $14 billion in revenue (2012) and has around 27,000 employees. (Image Source: Academy of Achievement)
Facebook co-founders, 2004. Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes & Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard University roommates who created Facebook in their dorm room. The site initially designed for Harvard students eventually was opened to everyone in September 26, 2006. As of September 2012, Facebook is reported to have 1 billion active users. Moskovitz has since left Facebook to co-found Asana while Hughes is current publisher and Editor-in-Chief of The New Republic. (Image Source: CNET)
YouTube Founders, 2005. Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, were early employees of PayPal before coming out and creating the most popular video-sharing site on the Web, YouTube.com. The first ever YouTube video, Me at the Zoo, was uploaded by Jawed Karim on April 23, 2005. By July the following year, the site was getting 100 million page views per day. Four months later, Google acquired Youtube at the sum of $1.65 billion. (Image Source: TheRichest)
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