Wish you could start a super-successful business but don't have huge amounts of investment capital to make it happen? From small seeds grow mighty trees, and believe it or not some of the world's biggest and most valuable companies got going with little more than a dream and a modest sum of start-up cash. Click or scroll through to read the stories of 31 globally famous firms that were founded with next to nothing. 

Londoners of very modest means, John James Sainsbury and his wife Mary scrimped and saved a few pounds to open a dairy shop in Holborn in 1869 and had to share a tiny flat above the shop with several families. That little store grew into major supermarket chain Sainsbury's, which turned over $36.6 billion (£28bn) last year.

In 1883 Barney Kroger used his entire life savings of $372 to open a small grocery store on Pearl Street in downtown Cincinnati. That's an investment that would be worth $9,465 (£7.2k) in today's money. Kroger's humble business has since grown to become America's largest supermarket chain, and turned over $121.6 billion (£93.1bn) during the last fiscal year.

According to company mythology, the iconic chewing gum firm, which was swallowed up by Mars Incorporated in 2008, started out in 1891 with the $32 William Wrigley had in his pocket when he arrived in Chicago from Philadelphia. That sum would be around $900 (£688) in today's money. In reality, however, Wrigley got his business off the ground with a cash gift from his uncle.

Strapped for cash, William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson assembled the first real Harley-Davidson motorcycle in 1904 in a 10 foot by 15 foot shed located in the Davidson family's backyard in Milwaukee. Nowadays their storied motorcycle firm, which turns over $5.7 billion (£4.4bn) a year, has sprawling factories in the US, Brazil, India, Australia and Thailand.

In 1907 Seattle messenger boys James Casey and Claude Ryan borrowed $100 to set up their own delivery business and the rest is history. Their firm, the American Messenger Company,  rebranded in 1919 as the United Parcel Service. Today UPS is the world's largest parcel delivery company with an annual turnover of $71.9 billion (£55.1bn).

Back in 1939 Stanford University grads Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard launched their namesake tech company in this one-car garage in Palo Alto, California with an initial investment of only $538. That investment would be worth around $9,950 (£7.6k) in today's money. The garage, which has since been converted into a museum, is widely regarded as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. Last year the firm had revenues of $58.8 billion (£45bn).

Just 17 at the time, Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943 in the Swedish town of Älmhult as a mail order business with a small sum of cash his father gave him for studying hard and excelling in his high school exams. The flatpack furniture giant now has thousands of stores worldwide and yearly sales of $41.3 billion (£31.7bn).

Mattel, which has is one of the world's biggest and most-loved toy companies hands-down, was launched in 1945 out of a garage in Hawthorne, California by married couple Ruth and Elliot Handler and Harold “Matt” Matson. The firm actually started off making picture frames, before it started using scraps from the frames to make dolls house furniture. Last year the firm turned over $4.5 billion (£3.5bn).

Makeup and skincare maven Estée Lauder founded her eponymous company in 1946 with modest batches of facial creams concocted in her New York home and went on to revolutionise the global cosmetics industry. For the last fiscal year the firm, which counts brands including Clinique, MAC and Origins among its portfolio, reported record sales of $14.8 billion (£11.3bn).

Tokyo defence contractor Masaru Ibuka partnered with former naval lieutenant Akio Morita in 1946 to establish Tosuko, the company that went on to become Sony, with startup capital of just $1,500 (£1.1k) when adjusted for inflation. Their first product was a 'power megaphone'. These days Sony generates yearly revenues of $78 billion (£59.8bn).

Tony Maglica created the first Maglite torch after saving just $125 to fund his dream, and established Mag Instrument Inc. in 1955. The investment is the equivalent of $1,200 (£916) in today's money. The flashlight firm, which is based in Ontario, California, now generates annual sales of $22.6 million (£17.3m) according to Owler, which isn't a bad return at all on $125.

Domino's started life in 1960 when brothers Tom and James Monaghan acquired their first pizza restaurant, which they named DomiNick's, in Ypsilanti, Michigan with a downpayment of just $75 and $900 loan. A year later Tom traded in his car in order to buy out his brother, and renamed the pizza joint Domino's. From these exceedingly humble beginnings, the company has grown to become the world's number pizza chain with an annual turnover of $3.4 billion (£2.6bn).

The sportswear behemoth was founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports by college runner Phil Knight and his track coach Bill Bowerman in Eugene, Oregon with a $50 loan from Knight's father, the eqiuvalent of $400 (£305) in today's money. During its early days operated out of the trunk of a Plymouth Valiant, from which Knight distributed Japanese Onitsuka Tiger running shoes. These days the company turns over $39.1 billion (£30bn) annually.

Subway came about in 1965 when teenager Fred DeLuna partnered with family friend Pete Buck who provided finance of $1,000, the equivalent of $8,000 (£6.1k) in today's money, to open a sandwich shop in Bridgeport, Connecticut called Pete's Super Submarines. Subway now has tens of thousands of locations worldwide and annual revenues in the billions of dollars.

Richard Branson was able to develop his entrepreneurial skills and found his Virgin empire in 1970 after his mother found a necklace on the street, which she handed in to the local police station. As nobody claimed the piece of jewellery, Mrs Branson was awarded £100 and gifted the cash to her son who put it to good use. Nowadays Virgin Group has an annual turnover in excess of $27.5 billion (£21bn).

Now read more about Richard Branson, the Virgin entrepreneur who made billions from records and rockets

The very first Starbucks was opened on Seattle's Western Avenue on 31 March 1971 by three University of San Francisco grads who each invested $1,350 (£1k) to make it happen. However, it was taken over by ambitious employee Howard Schultz in 1987 who put an expansion plan in place, inspired by the coffee culture he had seen in Italy. From just one store, the company has now become the largest coffeehouse company in the world with a yearly turnover of $26.5 billion (£20.3bn). 

Read more about Howard Schultz, the Starbucks billionaire

Originally named Micro-Soft, the tech titan had very humble beginnings when it was founded by childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen in a garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 4 April 1975. The fledgling computer firm started out developing software for the Altair 8800, the game-changing device that sparked the PC revolution. The business saw revenues of $125 billion (£95.5bn) in 2019, the year it also reached a valuation of a trillion dollars, the third US company to do so.

While the oft-mentioned story that Apple was born in the garage owned by Steve Jobs' parents in Los Altos, California is “a bit of a myth” according to cofounder Steve Wozniak, the tech titan did start out in 1976 with next to no money. Apple was the first US public company to hit a trillion-dollar valuation and last year raked in eye-watering revenues of $260.2 billion (£199.4bn).

Now a high-grossing subsidiary of Unilever, ice cream company Ben & Jerry's started out in May 1978 as an ice cream parlour in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont. Founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield bagged a loan of $4,000 and invested $8,000 of their hard-saved cash to open the store. 

A bona fide rags to riches tale, John Paul DeJoria had a stint living out of his car before he got together with Paul Mitchell in 1980 to found haircare company John Paul Mitchell Systems in Hawaii. The pair established the business with a loan of just $700, the equivalent of $2,100 (£1.6k) in today's money. Today their company enjoys annual sales exceeding a billion dollars.

Read more about John Paul DeJoria and other people who were born poor but went on to make billions

Looking for a way to use up beeswax left over from his honey business, Maine beekeeper Burt Shavitz teamed up with candle maker Roxanne Quimby in 1984 and formed Burt's Bees. The company, which didn't start producing personal care products until the late 1980s, got going with $200 made at a craft fair. Quimby bought out Shavitz for a mere $130,000 in 1999, the equivalent of just $199,500 (£152.3k) today. But the firm was later sold to Clorox in 2007 for a huge $970 million, the equivalent of $1.2 billion (£916m) in today's money.

Michael Dell was just 19 and a student at the University of Texas at Austin when he created his groundbreaking computer hardware company, which initially traded under the name PC's Limited, in 1984. The visionary techy formed the business in his dorm room thanks to a $1,000 loan from his grandparents. Dell now turns over a whopping $90.6 billion (£69.4bn) a year.

In 1987 business partners Fernando Duarte and Robert Brozin had to borrow cash from friends and family to buy their first eatery, a small cafe in Johannesburg called Chickenland. Luckily the piri-piri chicken joint was a hit from the get go and these days Nando's has 1,200 locations around the world and yearly revenues of $1.4 billion (£1.1bn).

Gaming hardware firm Alienware was founded in 1996 as Saikai by pals Nelson Gonzalez and Alex Aguila with a relatively modest $10,000 in startup capital. The investment is thought to have paid off handsomely when Dell, which itself was founded with very little cash, acquired the company for an undisclosed sum in 2006; the deal was thought to be worth millions.

Unstoppable entrepreneur Sara Blakely single-handedly developed and financed the shaping hosiery concept she named Spanx, and launched the brand from her Atlanta apartment in 2000 with just $5,000 startup cash. Today Spanx turns over hundreds of millions of dollars a year and its products are sported by women and men around the globe.

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Californian surfer dude Nick Woodman moved back to his parents' home and sold beads and shell belts out of his camper van in 2002 to save the $10,000 he needed to set up the company that would become GoPro. When the company went public in 2014 it had one of the most successful IPOs of that year, however, the next few years saw growing pains for the business as it tried to develop into a media company. GoPro hired more people and a media executive to build up a content arm including documentaries, but the shows never launched and this led to losses and a falling share price. The situation was made worse by product issues, such as the Hero5 Black camera which was found to leak underwater. GoPro has since restructured and its future is looking rosier; the action camera firm turned over $1.1 billion (£843bn) in 2018.

New Yorker Jon Oringer had created a string of startups including one of the net's first pop-up blockers before striking gold with Shutterstock. The serial internet entrepreneur got his stock media firm off the ground 2003 with little more than an $800 Canon camera. The company went public in 2012 and now boasts a yearly turnover of $623 million (£477m). 

The first port of call for holidaymakers in search of cheap flights, hotels, car hire, and more, Skyscanner started out in a bedroom in Edinburgh in 2003 with nothing more than a simple Excel spreadsheet. Fast-forward to the present day and the travel comparison site, which was snapped up by CTrip in 2016 for $1.7 billion (£1.4bn), pulls in annual revenues of $341 million (£261m).

After his PC was struck down with a malware infection even though he had antivirus protection installed, Polish-born computer whiz Marcin Kleczynski created what went on to become antivirus software company Malwarebytes in his Chicago bedroom in October 2004 with next to no money. Aged just 14, Klecznski honed his skills reading a For Dummies guide. Now the go-to for countless PC users worldwide, his firm turns over $126 million (£97m) a year.

Back in 2007 broke roommates Joe Gebbia and Brain Chesky were struggling to pay the rent on their San Francisco loft and decided to purchase three air mattresses they could hire out to paying guests. The duo hobbled together a simple website and Airbnb was born. All in all the company, which is expected to gross revenues of $8.5 billion (£6.5bn) this year, must have cost a couple of hundred dollars to set up, if that.

How Airbnb went from one bedroom to a billion-dollar company

Tough Mudder was launched in 2010 in New York by British expats Will Dean and Guy Livingstone who had to overcome their fair share of obstacles to put together the startup capital, which amounted to only $10,000 (£7.6k). The year after their first event in Pennsylvania in 2010 where 4,500 people joined in, the company had 14 events across America. These days the endurance events company, which has gone global, has an estimated yearly turnover of $110 million (£84.1m).

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