Several well-known technology companies were famously started in garages, basements, or similarly humble spaces. Here are a few examples:

Apple: Perhaps one of the most famous examples, Apple was started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the garage of Jobs’ childhood home in Los Altos, California in 1976. They built the first Apple computers (Apple I and Apple II) in this garage.

Amazon: Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, Amazon began as an online bookstore in the garage of Bezos’s rented home in Bellevue, Washington. The company eventually expanded to sell everything from clothing to electronics and became one of the world’s largest online marketplaces.

Google: In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin rented a garage in Menlo Park, California from Susan Wojcicki (who later became the CEO of YouTube) and used it as Google’s first office. Google is now one of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world.

Hewlett-Packard (HP): Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their company in a garage in Palo Alto, California in 1939. They had a coin flip to decide whether the company would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett. HP went on to become a significant player in the development of Silicon Valley and still operates today as a multinational IT company.

Microsoft: While it didn’t technically start in a garage, Microsoft was created in a similarly modest space. In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, operating out of a small space that would be the beginning of one of the largest technology companies in the world.

Dell: Michael Dell started Dell Computers in his college dorm room at the University of Texas in 1984. Dell became one of the top PC sellers, known for their direct-to-consumer sales model.

Harley-Davidson: Although not a tech company in the contemporary sense, it’s worth noting that one of the most iconic motorcycle manufacturers, Harley-Davidson, was started in a small wooden shed — a kind of “garage” — by William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson in 1903.

These stories are often cited as examples of how small beginnings can lead to great things, embodying the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation that drives the tech industry.