Did you know that three of the world class
websites were all started by college students?
Yes, indeed. That is the power that college
students have in the global arena.
However, success does not come cheap. For all
these college success stories, a heavy price has
been paid whether it’s at the expense of them
dropping out of college or facing a number of
hurdles along the way. As a college student, if
you are looking to take on that path and start
your own start-up, you should be prepared to
face any challenges that may come your way.
It is not hard to find an idea that you can
easily actualize. Do not look for a big idea,
instead, concentrate on finding a big problem
which you can then go ahead and solve. It
might take you a while, but you need to be
passionate and dedicated to what you are
doing if indeed you dream of launching a
successful start-up while still in college.
This piece will look at the infographic by
Essaymama titled “10 most valuable startups
launched by students” and dig into some of the
challenges founders faced as they attempted to
realize their dreams and the results they
eventually got.
1. Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen
They were both co-founders of the billion
dollar Microsoft enterprise. It all started while
in middle and high school when the two
programming geniuses met. Bill joined Harvard
University, but, after a year, Paul convinced
him to drop out, to which he obliged. After
struggling during the first few years, they
realized success when they licensed MS-DOS to
IBM in 1981.
2. Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg
As a Harvard undergrad, Zuckerberg started
Facebook as a sophomore to help connect with
fellow college students. From what started as a
sophomore dating site back in 2004, seven
years later became a site with over 1.39 billion
active users.
3. Yahoo, Jerry Yang and David Filo
These two Stanford Graduate Students founded
Yahoo in 1995. They did it three years before
Google was launched. They started Yahoo as a
directory of their favorite websites. In as much
as the platform struggled for a number of
years, it remains one of the largest websites.
4. Reddit , Steve Huffman and Alexis
Ohanian
The two grads from the University of Virginia
started reddit as a social news site in 2005.
After struggling for a few months, they were
funded by Y Combinator. It wasn’t until 2006
that Conde Nast Publications acquired the
entity.
5. WordPress, Matt Mullenweg
In 2003, the undergrad student of Houston
University teamed up with Mike Little and
Michel Valdrigh to create this awesome
Content Management System. Today, the
platform hosts more than 130,000 websites
out of the top 1 million websites.
6. Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin
They were both graduates of Stanford
University and founders of Google in 1998.
They had a hard time juggling between their
start-up and their studies and even opted to
sell it to Excite for $1 million. Fortunately,
Excite declined the offer.
7. Time Magazine , Britton Hadden and
Henry Luce
You may not believe it, but these grads from
Yale launched Time in 1923, and at that time it
was the first weekly news magazine in the
United States. The magazine has grown to
become one of the world’s largest circulated
weekly news magazine.
8. Napster , Shawn Fanning
The grad student from Northeastern University
started Napster as a peer-to-peer file sharing
network. After just 2 years, the platform was
temporarily shut down due to copyright issues.
However, Napster became an online music
store and eventually was acquired by
Rhapsody.
9. Dell, Michael Dell
The undergrad student of Texas University
created Dell in 1984. After struggling at first,
he received a $300,000 investment from his
family and decided to drop out of college. Now
Dell is the #1 shipper of PC monitors in the
world and is the sixth largest company in Texas
by total revenue.
10. Tripod , Bo Peabody and Brett Hershey
The web hosting service was started by two
Williams College students in 1992. The website
was initially created for college students and
provided such resources and services as
resume-writing help and tools for website
building. However, later Tripod was bought by
Lycos.
Most of these individuals encountered different
challenges during their journey but they did
not give up on their dream. As college students
wishing to pursue their dream, always keep
faith and never give up!

Very informative, I had no idea Tima Magazine, Wordpress and Reddit were founded by students
What about the infographic that is mentioned in the post? Where can I find the original source to look at it?

nigerianuniversityschorlaships.com

Thank you! Actually, I've just found its true original source - http://www.essaymama.com/blog/most-valuable-startups-launched-by-students/. The infographic turned out to have been created by Essaymama team.