Most successful startups from around the world were initially not doing so well when they first started. Most of the now successful startups were selling a service or product that looked completely different from the one they offer to their customers today, and it served a different market and need.
Below is a list of some of the most successful startup:
Airbnb
The story of Airbnb is the story of three guys who went from rent mattresses to starting a billion-dollar company. Back in 2007, Joe Gebbia and Brain Cheeky were designers, and unfortunately, they could not afford to pay their rent for their San Francisco apartment.
There was a convention that was happening in San Francisco, and most of the hotels in the city were fully booked, so Joe Gebbia and Brain Cheeky came up with an idea to go out and rent three beds on the floor of their living room and make breakfast for their guests.
They started a blog that they used to advertise the air mattresses they were renting out, and they eventually managed to get three people to rent their mattresses, one girl and two boys, at the price of $80 each.
After their small success and transforming the product to fit the market, they managed to enlist a former computer science graduate and former roommate called Nathan Blecharczyk to become a member of the business and built a website for the business.
Instagram was created by two guys who managed to build the app in just two months. Kevin Systrom graduated from Stanford and worked for Google in their corporate development and Gmail departments and spent most of his weekends working on an app that would allow note-sharing and location-aware photos and called it Burbn.
That is how Mike Krieger came to meet Kevin Systom, an early user of Burbn, and later, he became one of the co-founders of Instagram. As time went by, Burbn was transformed into only a photo-sharing app, and it was rebranded as Instagram.
Ben Silberman was raised by parents who were both doctors, and he thought he would follow the same path into medicine just like his parents. Back in 2009, Ben and his friend from college, Paul Sciarra, together with another friend Evan Sharp. Together they worked on a website where people could show the things they’re interested in.