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In this post, we will look at those super-startups that exemplify the advantages of great entrepreneurship.

We offer you successful examples and encourage you to use the techniques that fit your business.

Like we said elsewhere, it is smart to learn from others.

Don’t work hard; work smart!

Successful people managing online businesses are our role models.

We will do it based on stories published by Funders and Founders.

Oh, before we forget.

There is one important lesson for all of us: failure is not something to cry over but a springboard for our next leap.

Takeaways are always available, and if we understand what could be done better, we will succeed!

So, let’s take a look.

Until the COVID-19 undermined it, AirBnB was by far the most successful startup.

It is a story of three guys who went from renting mattresses to a $10 billion company.

In 2007, designers Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia couldn’t afford the rent on their San Francisco apartment.

There was a design conference coming to San Francisco and the city’s hotels were fully booked.

So, they came up with the idea of renting out three airbeds on their living-room floor and cooking their guests’ breakfast.

They set up a simple blog and got three renters (two guys, one girl) for $80 each.

After a small success and product-market fit, they enlisted a former flatmate and a computer science graduate, Nathan Blecharczyk, to develop the website and join the venture.

Once the pandemic is over, Airbnb, a strong competitor of the entire hospitality industry, will be soaring again!

(Actually, the pandemic is far from being over but Airbnb seems to be booming again...)

Many of us enjoy using Instagram.

Theirs is a story of two guys who made an app in flat 8 weeks.

Kevin Systrom, a Stanford graduate who worked on Google’s Gmail and corporate development, spent his weekends building an app.

It allowed location-aware photo- and note-sharing.

That’s how Kevin met Mike Krieger, an early user and Instagram’s co-founder.

Later the app was reduced to photos only.

Our next example is Pinterest.

Raised by doctor parents, Ben Silbermann assumed he would follow the same path.

He attended Yale University starting in 1999 and soon realized that he didn’t want to be a doctor.

After a consulting gig in Washington DC, working for Google, and a failed app, he came up with another idea.

In 2009, Ben and a college friend, Paul Sciarra, along with Evan Sharp, started working on a site on which people could show collections of things they were interested in.

It had an interactive pin-board format.

Ben personally wrote to the site’s first 7,000 users offering his personal phone number and even meeting with some of its users.

Over Thanksgiving dinner, Ben’s girlfriend thought of a name for it: Pinterest.

This is an app for collectors, and let’s admit it: many of us are avid collectors.

You may also remember how the online media loudly celebrated Angry Birds for years.

Many times its founders tried to build a successful venture and get gamers onboard.

The moral of their story is that even if you fail 51 times, you only need to succeed once!

In late 2002, Reid Hoffman recruited a team of old colleagues from SocialNet and PayPal to work on a new idea.

By May 2003, Reid launched LinkedIn out of his living room, inviting 350 of his contacts.

They were called to join his network and create their own profiles.

The business started with slow growth at first—as few as 20 signups on some days.

But by the fall, it showed enough promise to attract investment from Sequoia Capital.

Nowadays job seekers and companies alike use LinkedIn as their prime source.

After a conference in Paris, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp were complaining about the many crappy things we all have to deal with in life, including finding a cab.

The next thing you know, the two were already brainstorming.

They were thinking about ways to find cars at the right place, at the right time.

The result was Uber!

The examples are many.

We invite you to share your story, and if it is not a major breakthrough, so be it.

After all, a startup is about a start!