August 29 1997: Netflix was founded in Los Gatos, CA. They mailed DVDs in little red envelopes, with a huge collection of movies and tv shows to choose from. Ten years later, in 2007, Netflix started offering subscribers the option to stream movies online. Sources: 6 Famous Companies That Launched in Summer (so Don’t Take Time Read More …
August 23, 1956: The “Picture Phone,” an experimental product from Bell Labs, sent picture along with sound over telephone lines. The 2”x3” screen allowed individuals to see each other talking. They let the public experiment with this product much later at the 1964 New York World’s Fair – with eight picture phones letting visitors call neighboring booths. Read More …
August 22, 1966: In St. Paul, Minnesota, a small store called Sound of Music opened its doors to customers in late August of 1966. Fifty years later, Best Buy (the company changed its name in 1983) is a multinational retailer with nearly $40 billion in annual revenue. Source: Company Website Read more from the Goizueta Read More …
August 3, 1811: It’s the birthday of Elisha Graves Otis, born 205 years ago in Halifax, Vt. who found his inspiration while working in a Yonkers, N.Y., factory that needed to move heavy equipment to its upper floor. Using a hoist came with the risk of equipment crashing to the ground if the cable broke, so Read More …
July 2, 1962: Sam Walton opens his first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas at the age of 44. Sam Walton was no stranger to retail by this time. He worked for the J.C. Penney Company after college, which at that time was a relatively small retailer. After serving in World War II, where he was captain of Read More …
June 1, 1999: The world’s first peer-to-peer music sharing site, Napster, launched on this date. Before Napster, music lovers were limited to purchasing music as hard copies on CDs, vinyl, or cassettes. Napster enabled users to share music files in MP3 format, initiating a massive disruption in the music industry. Within just a year of Read More …
May 18 2012: Facebook started trading on NASDAQ as FB, with common stock priced at $38 per share. This gave Facebook a $104B valuation, nearly four times Google’s $23B valuation at it’s 2004 IPO. The IPO was notable for more than its size; as technical glitches at NASDAQ later led to lawsuits from shareholders. Sources: Read More …
April 23, 1985: It was just 35 years ago today, April 23, 1985, when Coca-Cola officially launched New Coke to the world, stating that it was “smoother, rounder, yet bolder—a more harmonious flavor.” Marketers are still debating the many reasons why New Coke failed, but one reason has been attributed to the fact that the company made Read More …
June 16, 1933: Following the failure of nearly five thousand banks in 1929, which promulgated the Great Depression, the Glass-Steagall Act was signed into law. As a provision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was established to protect bank customers’ deposits in the event of future bank failures. Source: The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, Read More …
June 1, 1980: With only 1.7 million viewers, the first 24-hour news cycle channel CNN was launched right here in Atlanta. The low viewership did not stop Ted Turner’s vision, and within three years, CNN gained over 33 million viewers. Now, CNN reaches hundreds of millions of households worldwide, not to mention passengers at every single Read More …
