Looking for office space for your startup business?  Is your spouse threatening to throw out all your important business papers if you don’t get them off of the dining room table?  Do you think you need a prestigious address to add credibility to your venture but don’t have the funds? 

You’re in good company.  Successful home-based startups are as American as apple pie and baseball.  Here are some examples: 

Hewlett Packard was started by William Hewlett and David Packard in a garage in 1939 with an investment of $538.  This garage is now a museum and has been called the “Birthplace of Silicon Valley.”
 
Apple, Inc.  Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs took a purchase order for 50 Apple 1 computers and used it to buy the parts on credit to assemble the computers.  They built the computers and delivered them within the required 30 days, allowing them to pay for the parts with a nice profit leftover.  They continued using this financing method and used whatever space they could find to assemble computers, including garages. 

Rod Johnstone designed one of the best selling sailboats in America, the J-24.  Why a 24 foot sailboat, instead of, say, a 30 footer?  Because that was the biggest sailboat he could build in his mother’s garage in Stonington, Connecticut. 

Have you ever seen those clog-like plastic shoes distinguished by their holes?  They’re made by Holey Soles.  You guessed it.  Holey Soles started in a neighbor’s garage.  It is now a $20 million a year business with over 70 employees. 

Amazon.com, started by Jeff Bezos, originated in a garage on desks built out of doors and four by fours.  Bezos became interested in e-commerce because he had seen a statistic that the Internet was growing at an annual rate of 2300%. 

Walt and Roy Disney borrowed some money and set up a studio in their uncle’s garage.  They started out making black-and-white cartoons.  The rest, as they say, is history. 

Google started as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University.  It was eventually moved to a friend’s garage. 

Michael Dell started Dell Computer in the college student’s equivalent of a garage – his off-campus dorm room at the University of Texas in Austin.  He started the company as PC’s Limited with $1,000 in capital. 

Although not strictly garage based startups, Ikea began as a mail order store operated out of Ingvar Kamprad’s home, EBay started out as Pierre Omidyar’s personal website called AuctionWeb (his first sale? – a broken laser pointer), and Estee Lauder started out with a single product – a home-developed skin cream. 

The Iowa SBDC recently recognized one of its clients, Anna Bradley, as the Deb Dalziel Women Entrepreneur of the Year.  Anna’s company, 508 Criterion Solutions, Inc. didn’t start up in a garage, but rather on her desk.  Her company is something of a virtual company that helps government contractors comply with federal regulations regarding accessibility for the disabled.  Many of her employees – some with physical disabilities that limit their mobility -- work from home, connected over the internet to Anna and their clients. 

So, when you get frustrated about not having enough space in your garage, or because you have to clear your papers from the dining room table for Thanksgiving dinner, think about these companies.  One day, you, too, might become a garage startup legend. 

Now, can we find another place for this Camry?  It’s time to get to work.