Startup Origins Stories View More
How Chobani Started in an Abandoned Factory
Chobani began as a rejected factory listing that everyone else walked away from — here’s how one immigrant entrepreneur turned it into a $20 billion company.
How Spanx Started With $5,000 and One Idea
How a fax-machine saleswoman turned cut-up pantyhose into a billion-dollar brand.
How Shopify Started by Selling Snowboards Online
Shopify wasn’t built to sell snowboards. It was built because a snowboard shop needed better software — and the software turned out to be the real business.
How Discord Started as a Failed Gaming Startup
Discord didn’t start with a plan to build a communication platform. It started with a game that failed — and a chat feature nobody meant to turn into a company.
How Notion Almost Died Before Rebuilding in Japan
In 2015, Notion almost died. The team was gone, the money was nearly out, and the product didn’t work. What saved it was a cold house in Kyoto, eighteen-hour days, and two founders who weren’t ready to quit.
Founder Stories View More
Sara Blakely: The Founder Who Turned a $5,000 Idea Into Spanx
How a fax-machine saleswoman’s childhood lesson in failure built a billion-dollar founder.
Tobias Lütke: The Programmer Who Accidentally Built Shopify
Tobias Lütke never wanted to be a CEO — he wanted to fix bad software. That instinct built Shopify.
Jason Citron: The Founder Who Turned a Failed Game Into Discord
He sold his first company for $104 million at 26. His second one failed. From inside that failure, Jason Citron built Discord.
Ivan Zhao: The Founder Who Rebuilt Notion From Scratch
Ivan Zhao nearly lost Notion in 2015. He fired his team, moved to Kyoto with almost nothing, and rebuilt from scratch. This is his founder story.
Funding Stories View More
How Shopify Raised Funding Before Becoming a Global Commerce Platform
Bessemer’s Alex Ferrara flew to Ottawa three times before betting on Shopify. Here’s why he did — and what came after.
How Discord Raised Funding After Pivoting From a Failed Game
A failed game shouldn’t have raised another dollar. Discord raised nearly $1 billion. Here’s how the pivot won investors back.
How Notion Raised Funding and Became an $11 Billion Company
Notion raised $418 million total. But the real funding story starts in 2015 — nearly broke, two founders, a rented house in Kyoto, and a product being rebuilt from nothing.
How Canva Raised Funding After Nearly 100 Rejections
Melanie Perkins heard no nearly a hundred times. This is the story of what it actually took — and who it took — to finally hear yes.
Startup Lesson View More
What Spanx Teaches Every Startup Founder
A business case study on Spanx: the evidence-based lessons in rejection, bootstrapping, and branding every startup founder can actually apply.
What Shopify Teaches Every Startup Founder
Shopify didn’t get lucky. Every real lesson in its history came from a decision that could easily have gone the other way.
What Discord Teaches Every Startup Founder
Discord didn’t succeed because the plan worked. It succeeded because the founders kept reading the evidence honestly — even when it was expensive. Here are 10 lessons from how they did it.
7 Startup Lessons From Notion’s Success Story
By 2015, Notion was nearly bankrupt with a broken product and no team. By 2026, it’s worth $11 billion. Here are 7 real lessons hidden inside that turnaround.
What Canva Teaches Every Startup Founder
Canva’s success looks obvious from the outside. The decisions that created it were anything but. Here are the lessons hiding inside the journey.
Failed Startups
Why Nokia Lost the Smartphone War
Nokia owned nearly half the world’s phones in 2007. Six years later, it sold its handset business to Microsoft. Here’s what really went wrong.
Why Did Google+ Fail? The Story Behind Its 2019 Shutdown
Google+ launched in 2011 with huge ambitions to rival Facebook. By 2019, Google shut it down. Here’s the complete story of why it failed, what Google got wrong, and the lessons founders should take from it.
Why Yahoo Messenger Died After 20 Years on Top
Yahoo Messenger ruled online chat for 20 years — then vanished. Here’s why it really died.