MEAPA's Enterpreneurship TimelineThis is a featured page

The list below briefly outline the 'back story' and timeline associated with some of the brands that are now household names. The 'back story' refers to what transpired before each company/person became a household name.

Google (3 years before company established)

  • 1995 - Larry Paige and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford
  • 1996 - January - started collaborating on a search engine called BackRub (ability to analyze the "back links" pointing to a given website)
  • 1997 - September 15 - google.com domain registered
  • 1998 - August - Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems wrote out a $100,000 check to Google Inc.
  • 1998 - August/September - Paige and Brin had no bank account and no Google Inc - quickly got additional angel investors ($1 million total)
  • 1998 - September 7 - Google Inc established and opened in garage

Craigslist (4 years before company established)

  • 1995 - Craig Newark starts as an email for San Francisco residents/programmers
  • 1999 - craigslist founded as a private for profit company
  • 2000 - expanded to 9 cities outside of San Francisco

Cheesecake Factory (over 20 years in the making)

  • Late 1940s - Evelyn Overton made a cheesecake for her husband's (Oscar) employer and opened small cheesecake shop in Detroit.
  • 1950s-1960s - Gave up shop to raise children (David and Renee) but supplied cakes to local restaurants through a kitchen in her basement.
  • 1971 - Oscar and Evelyn moved to Los Angeles, using the last of their savings to open a 700 square foot store "The Cheesecake Factory".
  • 1975 - opened large bakery as they had hundreds of accounts from Santa Barbara to San Diego, and even out of state.
  • 1978 - David founded The Cheesecake Factory restaurant in Beverly Hills, which made Evelyn's cheesecakes even more famous.

Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling (6 years of little, if any, support)

  • 1990 - Idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into Rowling's mind on a plane trip.
  • 1990 - December - Rowling's mother died after a ten year battle with multiple sclerosis.
  • 1992 - moved to Portual to teach English as a second language and married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes.
  • 1993 - gave birth to Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes and separated from husband.
  • 1994 - J.K. and daughter Jessica moved to be near J.K.'s sister in Edinburgh, Scotland. Also diagnosed with clinical depression.
  • 1995 - Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter
  • 1995 - Rowling submitted manuscript to 12 publishing houses, all of which rejected it.
  • 1996 - Bloomsbury press in London agree to publish book at request of the 8 year old daughter of Bloomsbury's chairman
  • 1996 - Barry Cunningham, editor of Bloomsbury advises her to get a day job since she had little chance of making money in children's books.

Samuel Truett Cathy (Chick-fil-A founder – over 20 years at one store)

  • 1921 – born Samuel Truett Cathy in Eatonton, Georgia
  • 1920s-1930s – sold Cokes, magazines and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a child and learned how to cook chicken by watching mother
  • 1946 – opened Dwarf Grill or Dwarf House – created chicken sandwich along with brother Ben
  • 1967 – opened first Chick-fil-A in Greenbrier Mall in Atlanta

Life is Good (t-shirt company - 5 years to find Jake)
  • 1989 - brothers Bert and John Jacobs began selling t-shirts out of an old van at colleges and street fairs up and down the East Coast.
  • 1994 - they adopted the mascot "Jake", a smiling stick figure and the mantra "Life is good." - symbolizing everything the brothers believed in.
  • For more information about its history, visit http://www.lifeisgood.com/about/

The Coffee Equipment Company (5 years to product)
  • 2001 - Zander Nosler developed coffeemaker for Starbucks called the Interactive Cup
  • 2002-2004 - Nosler decided he could do better and started to come up with plans for a superior coffee brewing machine
  • 2004 - Nosler recruited friends, family members and investors with a business plan and raise half a million dollars in a year
  • 2005-2006 - Nosler and employees worked developing the first Clover prototype.
  • 2006 - Nosler debuted Clover at the Specialty Coffee Association of America



No user avatar
meapaman 		Latest page update: made by meapaman , Aug 16 2008, 3:17 PM EDT (about this update About This Update meapaman Edited by meapaman

86 words added

view changes
- complete history)
Keyword tags: None (edit keyword tags)
More Info: links to this page

Threads for this page

Anonymous  (Get credit for your thread)

There are no threads for this page.  Be the first to start a new thread.