The Arrival: The Stories Behind 5 Iconic Tech Startups

Behind every great invention, whether it’s a dotcom empire or a signature American product, there’s a tough, gritty, slightly-socially-inept kid that made it happen. From Tumblr to WordPress, we rounded up some of the best stories behind great American startup companies—and they didn’t all start in Ivy League dorm rooms. Who knows? Your garage could house the beginnings of the next billion-dollar business. Take note, because here is the fifth in a series of seven features made possible by the new Heineken Star Bottle.

Jeff Bezos started out convinced that space entrepreneurship was going to be his career field of choice (as many of us do), and ended up channeling that entrepreneurial spirit into a multi-billion dollar website. After his Princeton years, Bezos had a hand in several startups, including computer science company Fitel and a young hedge fund firm, D.E. Shaw, before the allure of the Internet became too great to ignore. He moved to Seattle and invented Amazon.com out of his garage with the one guy he had convinced to join him: Shel Kaphan. The garage wasn’t good for the professional image, though, so in the early days they would hold regular business meetings over coffee at the local Barnes & Noble. Oh, the irony.

Not all Internet-bred geniuses start out in their parents’ basement, hacking away in the wee hours while devouring Pop-Tarts. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg studied jazz saxophone before he became every blogger’s best friend, then went to college and discovered his true self. The idea was born after Mullenweg hopped on his own blog to publish a long rant about the dire woes of the current blogosphere. One infinitely helpful commenter said, ‘Well, let’s do something about it,’ and WordPress now supports millions of long, angst-ridden rants every single day.

Drew Houston forgot his flash drive one too many times, and Dropbox was his form of anger management. Inspired by the way his school’s campus network was set up (MIT, of course), Houston invented the file sharing site to track document changes, stay organized and otherwise never have to reach for a flash drive again. If only all pet peeve solutions could be so lucrative. Oh, and we’re still waiting for his ’90s alt-rock cover band, Angry Flannel, to reach the same heights of fame as his day job.

Forget dropping out of college, David Karp didn’t even finish high school. He taught himself to code at age 11, and the rest of his career fell into place soon after. At 16, he got his first job as CTO of UrbanBaby, an NYC parenting website, but thankfully that didn’t last long. Faced with the stifling feeling that most blogging sites demanded its users to be witty writers, Karp created Tumblr as his answer to the status quo. Now, we can all breathe easy knowing there’s no pressure to create original content, and that $1 billion can surely buy happiness.