Dormstartups/ Facebook | Unlike competitors, Instagram boasts the highest engagement rate and the most active audience

Most Successful Businesses Start-Ups by University Graduates

Business LoungeSeptember 19, 2022

Dormstartups/ Facebook | Unlike competitors, Instagram boasts the highest engagement rate and the most active audience

In college, many students try their hand at entrepreneurship, even if it’s just by selling a handful of their own handmade candles. You might be shocked to hear how several extremely prosperous companies were actually founded in a university dorm room.

From Facebook to FedEx, many founding members of successful companies met in university and launched the ventures that would make them multimillionaires or even billionaires. This is by no means a comprehensive list; other wildly successful companies like Dell, Dropbox, Yahoo, and Microsoft are all significantly impacting the business landscape in their own right.

Jarretera/ Shutterstock | Setting up an enterprise from point zero doesn’t happen overnight

Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, both Virginia University alumni, are the creators of Reddit. In 2005, Reddit was launched as a social news website. Registered users can submit links to any websites they like on Reddit. Reddit encourages voting, just like any other startup.

Reddit is currently one of the most important internet websites in the world. According to SimilarWeb and Alexa, two of the greatest brands in the online competitive intelligence industry, it is the 21st most visited website. According to its inventors, Reddit is a play on the phrase “I read that on Reddit.”

SnapChat

Dormstartups/ Snapchat | The earlier in life you begin to pursue your dreams, the better

Unsurprisingly, maybe, college students who were heavily into parties, booze, and behaving irresponsibly came up with an app designed expressly to share embarrassing or dubious images with little worry they would come back to haunt you. But Snapchat has long since outgrown the age at which it was created. According to co-founder Evan Speigel, the app has 100 million daily users, with an estimated value of $16 billion in 2015.

The app shares many similarities with Facebook, possibly the most well-known of the wildly successful dorm room businesses. A millionaire named Spiegel left one of the most prestigious universities in the nation to oversee what has grown into a sizable social media platform. Both businesses have engaged in legal disputes over ownership rights.

WordPress

In 2003, WordPress was launched at the University of Houston. Two of its users, students Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, decided to create a new platform utilizing the b2/catalog as its foundation after the popular blogging program was canceled. Over time, the business has changed, and it now has global support from programmers, designers, scientists, and bloggers. WordPress was utilized by over 60% of all websites online as of June 2019.

Airbnb

Ruth Bushi/ Make Money | Airbnb connects homeowners who want to provide cheaper accommodation

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, the creators of Airbnb, just relocated from New York to San Francisco in late 2007. Due to their unemployment and ongoing search for income, they could not make their rent payments on time. There was a severe lack of hotel rooms due to the forthcoming Industrial Designers’ Conference in San Francisco. These two jobless developers found an opportunity in this. They let designers who needed a place to stay in their loft apartments.

They used the experience to develop a straightforward website called airbedandbreakfast.com, where they offered airbeds and a full breakfast for $80 per night. They put a lot of emphasis on a particular problem that nobody else had ever considered. For short-term rentals, Airbnb links tourists and homeowners. The goal of Airbnb is to provide a home for everyone. Today, Airbnb employs about 6000 people and generates 2 billion USD in revenue annually.