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After selling their first startup for $5 million dollars, Patrick and John Collison dropped out of MIT and Harvard to launch their next business; Stripe

After 6 months of coding, they launched their prototype in 2010. But competing with giants like Paypal wasn’t going to be easy, so the Collison brothers needed to acquire customers fast and cheap.

To land their first users, they went directly to where their potential customers were hanging out; Hacker News.

After writing a post on the site announcing their new product, they managed to get 300 sign ups for Stripe.

Then, they started using a tactic that would later become legendary in Silicon Valley known as "the Collision installation." When they pitched potential customers, instead of just sharing a sign-up link, they would physically take the person's laptop and install Stripe for them on the spot.

With scrappy strategies like this, Stripe grew into a $50 billion company and the go-to payment service provider for internet businesses.

For the full story, dive into The 50 Greatest Business Success Stories, and check out our Instagram

After graduating from college, Pavel Durov realized there was no way to remain connected with his classmates.

So in 2006, he launched Vkontakte, the Russian version of Facebook.

Initially confined to university circles, Vkontakte rapidly outgrew these academic boundaries, reaching an impressive 350 million users in just a few years.

However, Vkontakte’s soaring success came with challenges.

After the controversial 2011 Russian elections, Telegram turned into a hotspot for anti-government protestors rallying behind political activist Alexei Navalny, a vocal critic of Putin.

Alarmed by Vkontakte’s unchecked growth, the Kremlin pressured Pavel to remove opposition pages from the platform.

In a show of defiance, Pavel responded with a picture of a dog in a hoodie with its tongue out.

However, the Kremlin's reply was no joke.

That night, the military raided Pavels apartment.

The unsettling experience forced Pavel to flee his country and start his next venture; a secretive messaging app called Telegram.

Launched in 2013, the app promised to shield users from the government's prying eyes through unbeatable encryption.

Today, with over a billion registered users, Telegram is the third most downloaded social media app in the world.

For more wild business stories like this, dive into The 50 Greatest Business Success Stories and be sure to check out our Instagram

After coming in third on The Amazing Race, Paige Mycoskie won a trip to Los Angeles.

The trip was supposed to be a short vacation, but Paige was captivated by the city and decided to quit college and move there full time.

With no real plan, she got a job at a surf shop in Venice Beach and spent the rest of her day surfing.

Despite having no prior design experience, she fell in love with the world of retail and began designing her own clothes after hours.

Her hand-made designs on second-hand t-shirts. Began to attract attention.

Seizing the opportunity, she purchased a $500 stand and all of her T-shirts up for sale. She sold out instantly, making $8,000 in one day.

The next day, she quit her job and started; Aviator Nation; a 70s-inspired California lifestyle brand.

Known for its $660 smiley face sweatpants and $200 striped hoodies, the company took off during the pandemic; with sales hitting $130 million last year.

And the best part, Paige has never taken a single cent of outside money to grow the company, instead choosing to use bank loans.

By retaining one hundred percent of her company, she managed to amass a $380 million dollar fortune making her one of the richest self made women in the world.

Fun fact; her partner on the Amazing Race team was her older brother Blake, who went on to start Toms Shoes, a $600 million brand.

(Shameless Plug) For more stories like this check out The Business Greatest Business, and follow us on Instagram

What do you guys think of the new site?

https://www.foundercentral.co/

The main purpose of the company right now is to sell our book and continue to grow our social media pages. But then expand into newsletters and blog posts.

I feel the new name from shortformbooks to founder central helps establish us more as a business content company rather than a book company.

I’m also sorry for the constant short stories I would post in here, people were upset so I’m stopping that for now ❤️ just looking for honest advice on the site

In 1998, 3 German brothers, Marc, Oliver, and Alexander Samwer saw the rise of a new platform called eBay.

It sparked a thought: if eBay was gaining traction in the U.S, why couldn’t a similar platform work in their home country.

So they approached eBay with an idea: bring the platform to Germany and hire us to run it.

Despite their passionate pitch, the eBay executives turned the brothers down.

Returning to Germany the next year, they launched Alando, an eBay clone for the German market.

In a shocking twist, just a hundred days after launching, eBay acquired Alando for a staggering forty three million dollars.

Sensing they were on to something, the brothers used the money to launch Rocket Internet, a venture studio dedicated to the art of ripping off US companies.

The blueprint was simple: duplicate successful US businesses, launch them in foreign countries and eventually sell them to the original company.

Over the next few years, the Samwers targeted several major platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Amazon. Each time selling their clone for hundreds of millions.

Today, each brother is worth around 1.2 billion dollars.

(Shameless Plug) For more stories like this check out the 50 Greatest Business Success Stories along with our Instagram and tik tok

The original plan of my start up was to write/publish/sell books in the style of short form content. Because that was the sole model, we picked the name shortformbooks. Domain, social pages, and LLC all by this name.

However, as we assessed that before we can sell a book we have to first create an audience to sell to, we started posting social media content related to the business content that would be in our first book to help grow a pre sale hype.

As our title is called “The 50 Greatest Business Success Stories,” we started to post 60-90 second videos telling the stories of founders and their startups.

2 months later, we now have 40k followers across Instagram and tik tok, and realized we can do much more than just sell books, and the name shortformbooks would limit our reach.

So now we’re re branding to create a name that fits our content. We’ve boiled it down to 3 options,

Founder Central

Milking Upside

The Founders Almanac

When you read each one, which would you say tells you that we’re a media company focused on producing the stories behind founders and their startups. Which one rolls off the tongue and sticks out to you

To help paint a better picture I’ll link our website, Instagram, and tik tok. Thank you!

https://www.shortformbooks.com/

https://instagram.com/shortformbooks?igshid=NGVhN2U2NjQ0Yg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

https://www.tiktok.com/@shortformbooks?_t=8gsHNhbWDut&_r=1