Category: Internet Start Ups
YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing platform, has revolutionized the way people consume and share content. It was founded in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees: Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. This article delves into the fascinating story of YouTube’s founding, the challenges it faced, and its journey to becoming a global phenomenon. Youtube.com is the biggest video-sharing site in the world, it’s really huge! At the beginning of the year 2012, more than 4 billion videos were streamed every single day. Nowadays (2024) the platform boasts over two billion logged-in monthly users, making it one of the...
Only 10 years ago, no one could have even imagined that nowadays everybody would be able to make completely free calls with anyone, anywhere in the world… Not only can you talk with someone on the opposite side of the Earth, but you can watch him/her in real time, share files and even play games with the person you are connected to or make a conference call to a group of users. This is what Skype made possible and totally free for everyone! Great! And here is how it all happened… But first, what is Skype and how was it...
Today, Groupon.com is the biggest deal of the day site in the world. Its name comes from the words “group” and “coupon” and it is a place where you can buy stuff at really big discounts, reaching 90% for some offers. When the company went public on the 4th of November 2011, it was valued at nearly 13 billion dollars. That made the event the biggest IPO (Initial Public Offering), since Google‘s. Having in mind that at that time Groupon was a relatively new company (only 3 years old) and it had never made even a penny of profits, this...
Ehow.com is one of the biggest content sites nowadays. The site has a couple of millions of high-quality articles on whatever topic you could imagine. There you can also watch thousands of interesting videos, tutorials, research, and many more great materials. Its main business idea is to be a place, where users are able to find the answer to any question beginning with “How to” – from how to mow your lawn, to how to launch a shuttle in the open space. Every month more than 40 million people from around the world visit the site and their number has...
Foursquare’s Start-Up Story While some of the world’s biggest internet phenomena can spark from the thin air of life-in-motion, other concepts are slowly developed from several meetups. Sometimes, there are several conversations and ideas that have to mold into one dynamic app. Naveen Selvadurai and Dennis Crawley, Founders of the mega-popular app Foursquare took a slow, methodical approach but developed their idea from several life experiences. After having a bunch of different conversations at different coffee shops and restaurants, the question became, “how do you remember where we went?” More importantly, the conversation shifted; “how do we discover new places...
“I was bored!” Jim Wang said when he was asked how he decided to start the personal finance blog Bargaineering.com, which he later sold for the sweet round amount of $3 000 000. This is the amazing story of the young entrepreneur who created a super successful financial blog out of thin air because he didn’t have anything else to do… Well, all this didn’t happen without effort. Actually, Jim had developed the site for more than 5 years before his investment of spare time paid off big time. When he was in college, he spent his spare time hanging...
What Is Mad Mimi? Mad Mimi is, as they claim on their site (madmimi.com), “The world’s most sensible, enjoyable email marketing tool.”. It’s an e-mail marketing company that offers services like organizing, executing, and tracking e-mail marketing campaigns. For example, you can register for free, get a ready-to-use code from their site, put it on your site or blog, and … VIOLA! Now you have your own e-mail subscription service for your visitors. As simple as that… Now they will be able to subscribe to your mailing list. Everyone that subscribes by the box on your site gets on your...
LinkedIn’s Startup Story The story of the world’s biggest business social site LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com – has a very similar beginning, to many other high-tech and highly successful ventures. Only it was not started in a garage and not by a college dropout :). The founder of the popular site and its CEO – Reid Hoffman launched the site from his living room ;)… The idea for a professional social network was born back in 2002, when Hoffman and some friends of his, the other four founders – Allen Blue, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Eric Ly, and Konstantin Guericke, decided to start...
1SaleADay.com How about buying a laptop for 50 bucks? Are you interested? This is an extraordinary story about a guy, who made millions of dollars selling at big discounts! At first sight, you may be thinking that I am kidding, but this is not a laughing matter… This is the real story of Ben Federman, the founder of 1SaleADay.com, where you can buy every day different product at up to 90% discount. Imagine, that you want to buy a digital camera. The best price you have found so far is $300 bucks and occasionally you come across a site, where...
Imgur.com is a leading online image-sharing platform. It’s described as the home of the most shared and liked images from all around the world. It’s actually a very successful social network, which people use to share, comment, and store images with anyone. The site is visited by more than 100 million people every single month and has more than 350 million images uploaded. Like many of the other big and successful tech startups, Imgur was started as a hobby by Alan Schaaf in 2009. That year he was studying computer science at Ohio University. One day he decided to make...
