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Regular podcast listeners have probably heard ads for MailChimp, a company that makes marketing software for small businesses, and is most famous for its e-newsletter service. The company was founded in 2000 in Atlanta, and built up slowly, with . Today, the company makes .  

Another Atlanta business fairytale, shapewear company Spanx was founded by Sara Blakely. When Oprah wanted to include Spanx on an episode of her show in 2000, Blakely had to call in favors to for the camera—while in actuality, her only employee was herself. Today, Blakely is worth .  

In 1995, Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked from their dorm rooms to build . You probably know it by its current name: Google. It wasn’t until 1998 that someone cut the duo a check for $100,000, which gave birth to Google Inc. It was only enough money for them to move their operations into a small Menlo Park garage, but business eventually boomed, making Google .  

In 1995, Craig Newmark inviting them to an event. As he began sending more group emails—about job postings, and so on—people began to ask to be copied on his list. Newmark decided to start a site for all of these classified postings, Craigslist, which eventually became the .  

Beloved by photographers and adventurists, GoPro was founded Nick Woodman and his wife. They raised the money to start their camera company by selling shell jewelry and belts, along with a small loan from his parents. Since then, the .  

Apple, which has one of the most famous founding stories, was . Steve Job and Steve Wozniak used a garage as office space, selling a calculator (in the case of Wozniak) and a car (in the case of Jobs) to fund their operation. This year, Apple became the first public U.S. company to cross into .  

Tom Bilyeu started making protein bars in his kitchen with former colleagues. Once they had a viable product, Bilyeu , along with sample protein bars, to fitness influencers. Today, Quest Nutrition, sells far more than just bars, with a line of protein powders, pasta, chips, and more.  

Ironically, the founders of GoFundMe were, well, not funded. Co-founders Brad Damphousse and Andrew Ballester , which is now valued at $600 million.  

from Chicago created the cult hit game “Cards Against Humanity,” which many call an “R-rated” (or sometimes even “X-rated”) “Apples to Apples.” They gave the game away for free for two years before running a $15,000 crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Now, it’s a wildly popular card game, particularly among millennials, with countless extension packs.  

Top online survey and polling company SurveyMonkey began in 1999 as a . His team didn't raise any financing until . This year, the company .  

Tough Mudder is known for its difficult military-style obstacle courses, challenging participants with . Founder Will Dean is pretty tough, too: He and his co-founder . He threw his first event when he was 28. Since then, they’ve run more than 400 events, and they’ve still never raised capital.  

Called Facebook for web developers, GitHub was founded in 2008 by college dropout Chris Wanstrath along with Tom Preston-Werner and PJ Hyett. They didn’t take any outside funding for four years, surviving on subscriptions from individuals and businesses. This year, Microsoft .  

At age 17, Fred DeLuca from a family friend to open a little sandwich shop in Connecticut. Pete’s Subway, as the place was then known, was supposed to help pay for DeLuca’s schooling, but its runaway success did a lot more than that. Today, Subway has .  

Basecamp began in 1999 as tiny . When founder Jason Fried had trouble finding a project management app suitable for his small company, he decided to make his own. The app was released in 2004 and, soon, the profits from paying customers exceeded their web design profits. The company switched its focus, and is now valued at .  

with two friends doing part-time work out of a rented garage in Palo Alto, California. The two had just $538 of capital, which consisted of cash, plus the value of a used drill press. HP's first product was a resistance-capacitance audio oscillator, eight of which Disney bought to test movie theater sound systems before showings of "Fantasia." They moved out of the garage in 1940, went public in 1957, and now have 49,000 employees around the world.  

John Paul DeJoria made a friend in Paul Mitchell when the two were working at the same hair care company. In 1980, they to start John Paul Mitchell Systems. That company was plenty successful, but DeJoria and co-found the House of Blues chain of performance venues.  

Ben Lerer and his father started Thrillist with the idea that it would be a fun, culture site for men. They held off from raising money for years and, when they did (their only round to date), they . Today, the media group reaches more than 9 million people per day.  

This top job-hunting site got started and launched its first product without any outside help. By the time it accepted its first $5 million in funding, “They had bootstrapped the company, launched the service, and were well on their way. They didn't need our money,” . When Indeed was acquired by Recruit Co. Ltd. in 2012, it was worth .  

Markus Frind, founder of Plenty of Fish, started the dating service as a way to “improve” his resume. Not only did he build the service without any VC funding, but he remained the sole owner of the company until 2015, when he sold it to Match Group, and .  

Peter Rahal and Jared Smith started making protein bars in the basement of Rahal's childhood home. They sold their first bars door-to-door at local gyms. Lucky for them, that's a remnant of the past: Last year, .  

Michael Dell was still a 19-year-old when he began his computer parts company, PC’s Limited. He worked in the dorms with only $1,000 to his name. Dell dropped out of school at the end of the academic year and began growing the company, which would help start the PC revolution and become known simply as Dell, now valued at .

When Mariano Lopez started Analytica, an IT and management firm, . That meant renting out his place, sleeping in a friend’s basement, not relying on a credit card, and not going out with friends. He was the company’s sole employee, doing everything from marketing to accounting. Luckily, his work paid off: Today, the company makes .  

Frustrated with the available e-commerce platforms, Tobias Lütke decided to make a better platform himself. Along with his friend Scott Lake, he spent 18 months working on the software. Though they eventually borrowed $200,000 from people they knew and $250,000 from an angel investor, after that. By 2010, they had become profitable. They raised $7 million in funding in 2010, then $15 million in 2011. Now, Shopify is the go-to e-commerce service.  

In 1995, Pierre Omidyar spent Labor Day weekend at home writing code for a new online marketplace, . The first sale was a broken laser pointer. In 1997, amid the Beanie Baby craze, he renamed the site eBay. Today, that once-humble passion project is .  

How do you start a massive online company? If you're Jon Oringer, you buy an $800 Canon Rebel, , and slap a bunch of them on a website. That's how he started Shutterstock in 2003, funding the whole endeavor himself with zero venture capital. Now his site is the go-to place for buying stock footage, and .  

Orville and Heidi Thompson were deep in debt when they began experimenting with candle fragrances in their Crockpot. Their trick? Making a that scents rooms like a candle, but without the need for an open flame. The resulting company was Scentsy, which now has .  

This sales and marketing platform didn’t start with much, but it grew quickly. Henry Schuck, co-founder and CEO, was a first-time entrepreneur, bootstrapping to get along until they were making . Now, DiscoverOrg has been named one of Inc.’s fastest growing companies .  

Nick Denton started the massively popular blog Gawker from his living room. Eventually, the site split off into a number of different blogs, including Deadspin and Jezebel. Though the site (and Denton) went bankrupt after a lawsuit from Hulk Hogan resulted in a , it was purchased by Bryan Goldberg of Bustle and lives on today.  

Kevin Plank didn’t have much to his name except while in college. He racked up $40,000 in credit card debt to fund his sports apparel company Under Armour. A year in, he was broke, but a sale to Georgia Tech turned into interest from the NFL and other big names in the athletic world. Today, .  

Lynda Weinman launched Lynda.com in 1995 as a free resource for people interested in learning web design and other skills. Along with her husband Bruce Heavin, Weinman taught classes and received book royalties, which funded their burgeoning business. Despite some near-failures, she .