Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Building A Business From Scratch
March 26, 2026
Inspiring Stories Of How A Creative Idea Can Sometimes Be More Effective Than Investment
Airbnb
Airbnb was founded by Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia in 2008. They started their business on a shoestring budget, offering air mattresses on the floor for rent during a conference in San Francisco. The pair placed an advert offering a cheap room or ‘bed space’ with breakfast. As a result, they made a decent profit, which allowed them to pay the rent.
Money was needed to maintain the website offering mattresses for overnight stays. At the time, the election campaign was in full swing. The main frontrunners were Barack Obama and John McCain. The budding entrepreneurs bought cheap cereal and boxes and released limited-edition ready-made breakfasts with a personalised number and a high price tag of $40. The cereal cost just $1 per box. Thanks to media coverage and social media, the Obama boxes sold out in three days. The idea brought in $20–30,000.
It was from such a simple idea that the story of a company began, one that is now familiar to literally everyone.
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Oculus
Oculus was founded in 2012 by Palmer Luckey, who created the first prototype of a virtual reality headset. By the age of 22, he was already worth $500 million. Out of curiosity, he collected a range of outdated virtual reality devices. One day, Laki managed to buy a headset that had once sold for $97,000 for just $87. To expand his collection, Laki taught himself electronics: he bought broken iPhones, repaired them and sold them on at a higher price. That’s how he made $30,000.
These unsuccessful older models became the basis for new developments. Palmer was simply an enthusiastic teenager who loved video games and science fiction films. It was solely through his enthusiasm and passion that the young man was able to create what experienced engineers had been trying to do before him.
Slack
Slack was created in 2013 as a tool for internal company communication. Tiny Speck, a company founded by Stewart Butterfield, developed the game Glitch, which flopped. However, in the process, a communication tool was created that became the foundation for Slack. The messenger with advanced functionality was launched in 2014. The platform quickly gained popularity by solving the problem of fragmented workplace communications.
See: Bringing Good Ideas to Life: 13 Modern Ways to Innovate
Key factors in its success were word of mouth, an open platform with an API for integrating apps and bots, and a focus on organisational transformation. Slack works with competitors and offers integrations with various services: Google Calendar, Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
The company considers building an ecosystem to be a successful model for growth and meeting user needs. So it turns out that, by solving its own problems and challenges, the team created a service that many companies need.
Subway
The brand’s history began in 1965, when its founder, Fred DeLuca, opened a sandwich shop in Connecticut at the age of 17. This was how the future businessman decided to earn money to pay for his medical studies.
Peter Buck, a friend of his father’s, helped Fred open his first eatery, providing $1,000 to develop the business. Fred and Buck became business partners and were ‘fired up’ by the idea of creating a chain of restaurants across the state. DeLuca put his dream of becoming a doctor on hold and began learning the ropes of running a business. It is worth noting that in the early days, Fred made the sandwiches himself and managed to cope with the large flow of customers.
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