The Journey of Entrepreneurship 🚗

Hi Entrepreneur,

We’re sure as an Entrepreneur you might look at every successful entrepreneur and think “I want my business to flourish like that!” or “What’s the secret to their success?”

This edition of the newsletter brings you journeys of some successful entrepreneurs and the obstacles they faced while building their business.

We have gathered a list of entrepreneurs that started just like you on their journey to establish a successful business and are now have reached their goals of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

 Airbnb-

Before becoming a huge platform for people to book local homes to stay at while travelling. The idea started in 2007 when founders of the company and roommates at the time Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky weren’t able to afford the rent of San Francisco when they came up with the idea of “airbedandbreakfast.com”. It all started with an email sent by Joe to Brian stating how it’d be a great idea to turn their loft into a bed and breakfast with air mattress installed.

An idea that started as a way to earn some extra money ended up becoming a successful business idea! Although this success wasn’t overnight, they worked and when the company launched for the second time no one noticed. When they relaunched in 2008 they only had two customers one of them being Brian Chesky himself. When they went around looking for investors, they faced hard luck with connecting to 15 Angel Investors where they faced eight rejections and seven of them ignored the idea. After several struggles and finally acquiring funds in 2009 to grow the business, and after several legal obstacles Airbnb went public in 2020 and is doing amazing in the market still!

Uber-

The idea of Uber brewed on a winter night in 2008 when Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick were finding it hard to get a cab and discussed about how great it would be if people could request cabs from their phones. Without thinking much about it that night the two friends went their separate ways.

Although the idea remained embedded in the head of Camp, so when he came back to San Francisco, he bought the domain Ubercab.com.

In 2010, the company acquired major funding and in 2011 the company expanded in the USA and also launched in Paris, where the idea first came into being.

Although Uber’s growth was rapid they were caught up in a lot of scandals, especially in the year 2017 when one of the employee alleged that Uber's corporate culture was highly hostile, sexist, and offensive to most people.

Despite all the allegations and controversies that Uber has faced and still faces, it remains one of the leading cab providing services in almost every part of the globe.

Netflix-

A streaming platform we all love dearly to watch any category of show or movie anytime! Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph wanted to create a service that was stable and would be available for everyone in 1997. Netflix started off as a DVD-rental service where the customers were to pay for each DVD-rental and by 2005 Netflix was already selling 1 million DVDs daily offering around 35,000 movies!

In 2007 Netflix provided their first online streaming package and that took a huge turn for the company. Starting of as a package where users were limited to watch anything within a set time-frame did not stop the customers to access this service.

Netflix has taken over and changed how we watched TV in past 10 years, and with the amount of subscribers Netflix has gathered in past years, it is obvious that the company had faced some controversies. Although despite that Netflix still keeps growing and thriving while adapting itself to the newer generation of the audience.

LinkedIn-

LinkedIn started as a platform for professionals to connect and get information, in 2003 with a target audience of entrepreneurial hotshots, venture capitalists, and job seekers. Although one of the popular social networking sites, LinkedIn’s growth was not all rapid.

Users found it hard to understand the value this platform held and it garnered 150,000 users in 2004. Reid Hoffman, the founder and his constant efforts of introducing new features to make the site more appealing and get more attention were not really intriguing to the investors at the beginning.

In 2005 LinkedIn launched it’s job finding section and a subscription paid model which brought over 5 million subscribers. In 2006 it launched it’s website in Europe and opened it’s office in the UK.

What started as a rough idea back then, is now one of the leading professional networking websites. LinkedIn keeps on adapting itself to the new market and hence, still keeps on leading in the industry.

That being said, the key point of these entrepreneur stories is that: it all starts with an idea. If your business makes you happy then don’t give up on it when faced with challenges, take them on and build your business around those challenges. Lastly, always grow with your audience and the market to provide the best services you can with your business.

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This Week:  Sam Simpson

🎤Join us while we talk to Sam Simpson, one of our tutors for the course “Build Your Business in 6 Weeks”. He is a seasoned entrepreneur, Angel Investor, and Board Advisor known for his operational and delivery-focused approach, backed by 26 years of extensive experience. As the Founder and CEO of FounderCatalyst, he has pioneered the only affordable fixed-price method for funding round legals tailored for startups. Concurrently, Sam serves as the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at Forge Technologies.

This comprehensive course, backed by industry professionals and universities, equips you with essential skills for business creation, growth, and investment readiness.

You can find more on www.thestartupevents.co.uk 

We are happy to provide you with all the support and information that you need to get started or learn about for making your startup a success and we’d be glad to become a part of your success journey! 🤩✨

Warm regards,
The Startup Events Team 🌐