Speaker 1: Welcome to Big Tech. I'm your host Daniel Cole. Today
Speaker 1: we're diving into one of the most fascinating chapters in
Speaker 1: technological history, the legendary garage startups that transformed into the
Speaker 1: giants that shape our digital world today. When we think
Speaker 1: about Silicon Valley mythology, nothing captures the imagination quite like
Speaker 1: the garage startup story. It's become almost a cliche, brilliant
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs working late into the night in cramped suburban garages,
Speaker 1: surrounded by circuit boards and empty pizza boxes, coding the
Speaker 1: future into existence. But here's the thing about cliches. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they exist because they're rooted in remarkable truth. Let's start
Speaker 1: with perhaps the most famous garage in tech history, the
Speaker 1: Hewlett Packard Garage in Palo Alto. In nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard began their electronics company in
Speaker 1: a single car garage behind their rented house on Addison Avenue.
Speaker 1: With just five hundred and thirty eight dollars in working capital.
Speaker 1: They created their first product, an audio oscillator that would
Speaker 1: eventually be used by Disney for the sound effects in Fantasia.
Speaker 1: That garage is now designated as the birthplace of Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: and it set the template for everything that followed. Fast
Speaker 1: forward to the nineteen seventies and we find Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: and Steve Wozniak in the Jobs Family garage in Los Altos.
Speaker 1: Wosniak had designed what would become the Apple one computer,
Speaker 1: and Jobs convinced him they should start a company. They
Speaker 1: famously sold personal belongings. Jobs sold his Volkswagen van Wosniak
Speaker 1: his HP calculator to raise thirteen hundred dollars in startup capital.
Speaker 1: Working in that garage, they hand built fifty Apple one
Speaker 1: computers to fulfill their first order. The rest, as they say,
Speaker 1: is history. But it wasn't just Apple. In nearby Menlo Park,
Speaker 1: another garage was brewing revolution. In nineteen ninety eight, Larry
Speaker 1: Page and Sergey Brinn rented a garage from Susan Wadchik
Speaker 1: for seventeen hundred dollars a month. This became Google's first office,
Speaker 1: where they worked on perfecting their page rank algorithm. Wood
Speaker 1: Shikkee would later become CEO of YouTube, which Google acquired.
Speaker 1: That garage workspace lasted only five months before they outgrew it,
Speaker 1: but those five months changed how humanity accesses information. The
Speaker 1: garage genesis wasn't limited to the Bay Area. Up in Bellevue, Washington,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos left his lucrative Wall Street job and drove
Speaker 1: west with his wife Mackenzie. In nineteen ninety four, he
Speaker 1: started Amazon in the garage of their rented house. Initially
Speaker 1: focusing solely on selling books online. Bezos built the first
Speaker 1: desks himself, using doors from home depot and four by fours.
Speaker 1: From that modest garage, he envisioned something much larger, not
Speaker 1: just a bookstore, but Earth's most customer centric company. Perhaps
Speaker 1: most intriguingly, consider the story of Disney. While not a
Speaker 1: tech company in the traditional sense, Walt Disney and his
Speaker 1: brother Roy started their animation studio in their uncle's garage
Speaker 1: in Hollywood in nineteen twenty three. They created some of
Speaker 1: their earliest animations in that cramped space, laying the groundwork
Speaker 1: for what would become one of the world's most powerful
Speaker 1: entertainment and media conglomerates, now a major player in streaming
Speaker 1: technology and digital content. What's fascinating about these garage stories
Speaker 1: isn't just their humble beginnings, but what they represent about
Speaker 1: innovation in entrepreneurship. The garage became a symbol of resourcefulness,
Speaker 1: of making do with what you have while dreaming of
Speaker 1: something bigger. These weren't just storage spaces. They were laboratories
Speaker 1: of possibility. Of course, we should acknowledge that the garage
Speaker 1: startup narrative, while compelling, doesn't tell the complete story of
Speaker 1: these companies' success. Behind each of these ventures were educational privileges,
Speaker 1: family support systems, access to capital, and often significant amounts
Speaker 1: of luck and timing. The garage may have been where
Speaker 1: the work happened, but it wasn't the only ingredient in
Speaker 1: the recipe for success. Still, there's something undeniably powerful about
Speaker 1: these origin stories. They remind us that transformative ideas don't
Speaker 1: always need massive infrastructure or corporate backing to get started.
Speaker 1: Sometimes all you need is a cramped space, a big idea,
Speaker 1: and the determination to turn possibility into reality. These five companies, HP, Apple, Google, Amazon,
Speaker 1: and Disney started in garages and went on to fundamentally
Speaker 1: reshape how we work, communicate, shop, and entertain ourselves. They
Speaker 1: prove that the most profound changes often begin in the
Speaker 1: most ordinary places. This episode was created with the assistance
Speaker 1: of artificial intelligence