A startup is an arduous and challenging journey with significant risks. Therefore, it is advisable first to acknowledge the many dangers a business starter can encounter before embarking on the start-up journey. You can find support in many places. More specifically, you can find the proper support for your project with Ideaology!
Like Team IDEA and the Active IDEA platform, these inspiring startup stories will guide you through the complicated difficulties in their respective start-up ventures. If you are planning your startup, these stories are for you!
Ralph Lauren
When it comes to start-up stories in the fashion industry, the first name to come to mind would be Ralph Lauren, the infamous Polo founder.
Born into a large Jewish family, Ralph Lauren grew up with a desire to escape poverty. After training in the army, he returned to New York to work as a secretary for Brooks Brother — one of the oldest men’s fashion brands in America at the moment.
In 1967, he worked for the Beau Brummel Neckwear store, and this is where he created the first ties in his name. The first ties netted Lauren his first $ 50,000. From this moment onward, his start-up story begins.
Ralph Lauren has a highly unique view of fashion design. He considers it as making a movie, envisioning films, and conveying these ideas into his collections.
His creativity and perseverance have helped him start a successful business and create one of America’s most famous fashion brands. Now, at the age of 75, he has established one of the world’s largest fashion houses, with a net worth of more than $ 7 billion, has a collection of antique cars with 70 cars worth about $ 200 million, and owns a charity that supports cancer patients.
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban was born in 1958 in a working-class family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From the age of 12, Mark Cuban has been making money relentlessly.
After graduating college, Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas, to work for a software company. It stimulated his passion for science and technology and thus motivated him to build his own computer company — MicroSolutions, in 1983.
In 1990, at the age of 32, Mark Cuban officially became a millionaire when CompuServe Company bought MicroSolutions for $ 30 million.
Realizing the world-changing capability of the Internet, in 1995, Cuban devoted himself to establishing Broadcast.com. A few months later, when listed on the stock exchange, Broadcast.com reached $ 200/ share. In 1999, the company was sold to Yahoo for $ 5.7 billion, making him a billionaire at 41.
Currently, he has many other businesses and investments. He is serving as one of the major investors on the TV show Shark Tank. Also, he’s a co-owner of media group 2929 Entertainment and US cable and satellite TV company AXS.
Steven Chen
Steven Chen was born in 1978 in Taiwan. Both his parents are highly educated. When he was eight years old, the whole family moved to the US because of his parents’ work. Thanks to his programming talent, he attended Illinois University, ranking 5th in the entire United States.
From the initial idea of creating a video dating platform via social media between Chen and some friends, they eventually bought the domain youtube.com and gave birth to Youtube.
On April 23, 2005, the first user posted a video to Youtube. In the video, a boy was introducing the animals on his trip to the zoo. This marked the beginning of a thriving era of Youtube. One year later, Youtube has more than 40 million videos posted. Each day, it can attract 6 million new users, becoming the largest video-sharing platform in the United States.
After only 20 months of founding, Chen sold Youtube to Google for $ 1.6 billion. At the age of 28, Steven Chen, with a net worth of $ 300 million, was honored by Fortune magazine as a millionaire.
Michael Kum
Michael Kum is a Singaporean-Chinese businessman. His parents are poor immigrants to Singapore, and his family lives in a makeshift attic house on the banks of the Kallang River for his entire childhood.
Despite the many difficulties, his parents tried to guarantee him a brighter future via education. Michael Kum studied at the London Chamber of Commerce in Singapore and completed a Certificate in Cost Accounting with flying colors.
Michael Kum made his first investment gamble in 1976. He put all his small savings into setting up the transport company PTE, chartering ships in Singapore. PTE Company quickly became one of the largest shipping companies in Singapore and acquired several berths in Singapore and Indonesia to serve PTE’s shipping network.
In 2009, he noticed that the Sheraton hotel chain was inviting partners to invest in the Four Points 630 hotel project in Sydney, Australia. After several months of negotiations with Sheraton, Michael Kum decided to spend $ 170 million to buy the hotel, laying the foundation of Michael Kum’s hotel empire consisting of 19 hotels spanning 12 cities in Australia, Japan, and Singapore, Canada, and the UK.
His hotel chain currently maintains an occupancy rate of about 80–85%, an ideal hotel industry rate. The total assets of his hotel chain are now more than 1.6 billion USD, according to Forbes.
Pham Nhat Vuong
Brought up in a low-income family in Vietnam with his three brothers, Pham Nhat Vuong has grown up to become the first billionaire in Vietnam with a total value of up to 20,000 billion VND, equivalent to 1 billion USD at the moment.
In 1987, thanks to his outstanding mathematics achievements, Pham Nhat Vuong won a scholarship to study in Moscow. There, he majored in economics and geology at the Moscow Geological Institute.
In 1993, he established the “Mivina” brand. He started to produce instant noodles after borrowing $10,000 from Vietnamese friends and the European Bank. He expands production to other goods such as packaged dried herbs, potato flour, soup. The emergence of “Mivina” instant noodles in 1995 was very timely and quickly became extremely popular in Ukraine.
Within a year, Pham Nhat Vuong sold 1 million instant noodle packs. By 2004, the consumption of Mivina noodles in Ukraine reached a record high; 97% of Ukrainian consumers use it. During these years, the brand Mivina indeed was a household name.
Since 2000, simultaneously with running his business in Ukraine, Pham Nhat Vuong started to invest in his home country — Vietnam with the opening of two real estate companies, Vinpearl in 2000 and Vingroup in 2002. In 2007, Vingroup was listed on the stock exchange and is currently one of the five largest companies by market capitalization on the Vietnamese stock exchange
Pham Nhat Vuong is considered the first US dollar billionaire on the Vietnamese stock exchange. According to Forbes, his assets in August 2015 reached $ 1.65 billion, while the capitalization of Vingroup reached $ 3 billion. He became the first US billionaire in Vietnam, continuously being on the list of billionaires voted by Forbes and the top 20 prominent new faces of Forbes in 2013.
Do you see? Success can be and will come in many forms and sizes. The only common denominator to achieve it is preserving and honestly believing that you will succeed by doing what you love. There are many ways to succeed, but there is almost no way for us to override the process to success.
One thing you can do is be informed, know the trends, and learn how to take advantage of every opportunity that will come your way. Maybe you can be successful through collabvesting, crowdfunding, staking, or investing. Or you’ll hit your luck with Team IDEA’s list of online businesses to start in 2021. But one thing is sure. You’ll never get there if you do nothing.
Start now, and don’t give up halfway. Success is only an IDEA away!
