Legendary Startups: From Garage to Billion

Explanation: Apple was founded in the garage of Steve Jobs' parents in Los Altos, California. Steve Wozniak assembled the first Apple I computers there.

Explanation: Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in his garage in Seattle in 1994. The company initially sold only books. The name evokes the Amazon River, the world's largest.

Explanation: Facebook was born in Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room at Harvard. Initially reserved for Harvard students, it opened to the world in 2006.

Explanation: Elon Musk co-founded PayPal (then X.com) in 1999. The sale to eBay in 2002 earned him $165 million to fund SpaceX and Tesla.

Explanation: The term "unicorn" was coined in 2013 by Aileen Lee. It refers to private startups worth over a billion dollars, which was rare at the time.

Explanation: Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates. They met at Lakeside School in Seattle and shared a passion for computing.

Explanation: BlaBlaCar, the carpooling service founded in 2006, became the first French unicorn with a valuation exceeding one billion euros.

Explanation: Airbnb was born when the founders rented air mattresses ("air bed") in their San Francisco apartment to pay their rent.

Explanation: Spotify was founded in Stockholm in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, then launched in 2008. The service revolutionized the music industry with its freemium model.

Explanation: Uber was founded by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp. The idea was born on a winter evening in Paris when they couldn't find a taxi.