Category: Uncategorized

How Coca-Cola Was Started – The Start-Up Story Of John Pemberton and Asa Candler

The Coca-Cola Company has been one of the world’s most recognized and beloved brands for decades now. From its beginnings in 1886, when it was created by pharmacist John Pemberton, to today where it is a global beverage giant with annual revenues of over $42+ billion (2022) – Coca-Cola has come a very long way. Its story is simply amazing and we’re going to see now how it all happened… A Brief History of Coca Cola In 1886, a Confederate veteran and pharmacist/chemist named John Stith Pemberton felt the need to make something new. He had been wounded in the...

The Most Important Business Lessons From The CEO of Wells Fargo – Dick Kovacevich

The Most Important Business Lessons From The CEO of Wells Fargo – Dick Kovacevich

If you haven’t heard about Dick Kovacevich, he is an American businessman who served as the chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo from 1998 to 2007. He previously served as president and chief operating officer at Norwest Corporation, prior to their merger with Wells Fargo in 1998. In addition, he has held numerous corporate positions including Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, member of the executive committee for Visa Inc., and director on the board at Aetna Inc., Chevron Corporation, 3M Company, and Oracle Corporation. Dick is most known as the chief executive officer of Wells Fargo –...

Entrepreneur Definition

How To Become An Entrepreneur? Do You Have The Most Common Entrepreneurial Traits?

Are you wondering about how to become an entrepreneur? Most entrepreneurs are simply born this way (this doesn’t mean that you can’t learn to be one of them, too). This is why there are so many millionaires and even billionaires who have never graduated from college. Some of them haven’t even finished their high school education (billionaire Richard Branson is a bright example). These are the so-called natural entrepreneurs. Even though you can learn to be one of them, most of the characteristics common for so many entrepreneurs are inside you when you come to this world. I came across...

Steve Jobs 2010

Steve Jobs Worked for Only $1 Per Year

One of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time, the founder of one of the most innovative and successful companies in the world – Apple, had been working for only 1 dollar annual salary for the last 15 years! This way Steve Jobs was one of the ‘worst’ paid chief executive officers for many years in the corporate world in America. In the same time his company have been one of the best performers for these years. This looks like some kind of an oxymoron, but it’s the pure truth. Excluding the 90 million plane, which was a gift to him...

Tim Patterson

Fact: Microsoft Bought Their First Operating System MSDOS From Tim Patterson

Did you know, that Microsoft bought the prototype of their first disk operating system  “MS-DOS” from a man working in a small computer company named “Seattle Computer Products”? Tim Patterson, an engineer in this enterprise, had developed the operating system for six weeks, for internal purposes only. He named it QDOS – “Quick and Dirty Operating System”. One day, in 1980, as Tim was sitting in his lab, he was visited by a man named Paul Allen (one of the founders of Microsoft), who offered him $50 000 for his QDOS software. Can you imagine Patterson’s face at that moment? What...

US Minimum Wage Growth - Nominal and Real

How The Minimum Salary in US Changed In History

Did you know, that the minimum hourly wage was 25 cents, when the federal minimum wage law was enacted back in 1938. This was equal to 4 dollars today’s money. Having this in mind, the average minimum hourly earning has increased only twice in real terms and 16 times (to $8) in nominal terms. In 1980, more than 16% of the working population received minimal wage. Today this percentage is under 3%.   You can read some interesting information about wages and labor on the site of the United States Department Of Labor located here https://www.dol.gov/

Caleb Bradham, the founder of Pepsi

PepsiCo – the History of Pepsi-Cola and Caleb Bradham

History In 1893, Caleb Bradham created a drink in his home spicing it with kola nuts and the enzyme pepsin. At first, he called it “Brad’s Drink” and this was the first name of Pepsi Cola. It was so delicious that he soon started selling it in his neighborhood. Later, in 1998, this tasty beverage was renamed to Pepsi Cola and this was when the start of this world brand was put. In the first years, Bradham prepared Pepsi in his drugstore, but soon he was not able to supply the increased quantity that people wanted to buy. In 1903...

The biggest start up crashes

Which Are The Biggest Tech Start-Up Crashes And Failures – Millions Of Dollars Burned

In BusinessIdeasLab we have been writing about some of the greatest and the most successful start-ups in all time. But in the start-up world, things are not going always smoothly, contrariwise, most of the newborn companies actually end up in flames. Different statistics show that more than 45% of start-ups in the United States survive not more than 6 months. In the long run, 3 out of 4 new businesses don’t make it at all… So, to be objective, we consider that we are supposed to write not only about success but also about failure. The latter could be even...

Kentucky Fried Chicken KFC

KFC – The Start Up Story Of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Colonel Sanders

History There are many inspiring stories about young entrepreneurs, who started successful business and made some millions. But if you have missed doing this in your salad days, you should not lose faith. Here is a story about a man in his 60s, who founded one of the most popular companies from all over the world – KFC or Kentucky Fried Chicken… Colonel Sanders had not an easy childhood, like many other kids. He learned how severe life can be from a very young age. He started his work career at the age of 12, as a farmer boy, and...