Entrepreneurship Facts

Dell Computers was started by a 19 year old with only $1,000.

Hewlett Packard was started at a garage in Palo Alto in 1939.

Gary Kremen, the founder of Match.com, had a classic startup problem: no users. His solution was to get everyone at the company, plus friends and family, to create profiles. That included his girlfriend. The strategy worked a little too well — she met someone else on the site and left him.

There's a man named Raffi Stepanian who mines diamonds and gold from New York City sidewalks, making over $600 in one week.

Walt Disney was a high school dropout and he was fired by a newspaper editor because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas."

The co-founder and CEO of SnapChat, 23-year-old Evan Spiegel, turned down an offer of $3 billion from Facebook and then a $4 billion bid from Google.

50 Cent was offered a flat $5 million to be the face of Vitamin Water. He turned down the cash and negotiated for a minority equity stake in the company instead. When Coca-Cola bought Glacéau (Vitamin Water's parent company) for $4.1 billion in 2007, 50 Cent walked away with an estimated $100 million.