- Seattle 1967 – The lakeside mothers club from the proceeds or a rummage sale install a ASR-33 teletype machine for kids to experiment with. Seventh grader Bill Gates finds his calling.
- Sausalito, CA 1998 – The naming wizards at Lexicon Branding note that the tiny keys on Research In Motions new device looks like a blackberry. The infamous name for the Blackberry phone is created.
- Portland, Oregon 1982 – Dan Wieden and David Kenedy set up a new ad agency together from scratch. Their fist slogan was “Just Do It”
- San Jose, CA 1995 – Pierre Omidyar launches eBay from his apartment. The first bid was for a broken laser printer. He called to make sure the bidder knew it was broken. The bidder replied back saying he collects broken laser printers.
- La Honda, California 1997 – Reed Hastings contemplates telling his wife about the $40 late fee for Apollo 13. Instead he tells her about a better idea.. Netflix
- Palo Alto, CA 1995 – Stanford Grad student Sergey Brin and Student Larry Page meet. They disagree on almost everything at first. They soon get over it and start a search engine called BackRub. Two years later it’s re-named Google.
- Black Rock Dessert, Nevada 1999 – Philip Rosedale drives to a Nevada desert festival called Burning Man. He over hears someone say “Reality is what you make of it”. He follows the insight and creates the game Second Life.
- Scottsdale, Arizona 2005 – Bob Parson’s Company needs more exposure so he commissions a 30 second Super Bowl add for half a million. In 2006 Godaddy becomes the largest web host.
- Houston, Texas 1980 – Micheal Dell talks his parents into a getting him a new computer for his 15th birthday. His parents where furious that he took it apart right after getting it. He makes up for disaster by starting Dell.
- Burlington Vermont 1979 – Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield celebrate their companies first anniversary by giving away free ice cream to anyone that stops by their shop.
- Santa Barbara, CA 1998 – Charles Yarbrough joins up with a partner to create a easy way for businesses to get online for a low price. 2001 DWHS Inc. is created.
- London, England 1966 – Richard Branson’s published a magazine called Student at age 16. He then set up an audio record mail-order business in 1970. In 1972, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records, in 2009 the Virgin umbrella handles over 360 companies under it.
This really inspired me, thank you!