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It is easy to believe that the famous companies we know today have been around forever.
Though they weren't, their startup stories are like superheroes - unassuming, fascinating, and moving.
Here are seven things you didn't know about businesses you know and love.
READ MORE: FROM UBER TO MICROSOFT – THESE ARE THE BIG COMPANIES THAT COULD STRUGGLE IN 5-10 YEARS
James and Tom Monaghan founded Dominos and purchased a pizza restaurant called DomiNick's for $500.
James sold 50 percent of the right of the business to his brother for a used Volkswagen Beetle.
About 40 years later, Tom retired, so he sold most of his stake in the company.
His takeaway his brother missed out on was $1 billion.
Three years after Frederick Smith founded FedEx, increasing fuel costs pushed the business to the brink of bankruptcy - it was losing around $1M each month.
When the firm had $5,000 left, Smith brought the money to Las Vegas on a Friday night and played blackjack.
By Monday, he made $32,000, which was enough to cover fuel costs and resume operations for a couple of days.
This gave Smith enough time to raise the money to keep the company alive.
In 1976 FedEx became profitable and now has an estimated value of around $25-35 billion.
In high school, Bill Gates coded a lesson scheduling program to help decide who should be in which classes and when.
He modified the code to guarantee he ended up in classes with mostly female students.
Have you ever wondered why Apple's apple has a bite out of it?
The initial logo had Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree.
That was switched to the one we are familiar with today, an apple.
The bite was added to the silhouette to differentiate the fruit from a cherry.
Smirnoff was initially a Russian business that changed to an American one in 1939.
At the time, Americans were massive whiskey drinkers and didn't know much about vodka.
This inspired a marketing idea: Smirnoff called itself "white whiskey," with "no smell, no taste."
The drink became especially popular with people who wanted to drink early in the day without reeking of alcohol.
Google's ranking algorithm is PageRank, which allocates every page a rank that chooses the page's fit in search engine results.
PageRank isn't named after what it does, but after the co-founder, Larry Page.
What's even weirder is that back in the day, it was called BackRub.
Why, did you ask? It referenced the underlying algorithm, which estimated backlinks as affirmative votes.
Ben and Jerry were initially planning on launching a bagel company.
However, the supplies were so pricey they switched paths.
Instead, they invested $5 in a course on ice cream making from Pennsylvania State University.
Unbelievably, owner Ben Cohen has no sense of taste so uses "mouth feel" to decide whether his ice-cream is tasty or not.
This is why the ice-cream has big chunks of nuts, fruit etc.
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