Howard Schultz had 2 months to get the money to buy it.
With a month left, one of Schultz's own business partners tried to snipe the deal.
One of my favorite business stories ever 👇
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So, first things first:
Howard Schultz did not found Starbucks.
It was started by three college friends who set out to make a great coffee *roaster.* No drinks, no places to sit. Just great beans.
They opened their first location in 1971.
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In 1981, Schultz was a young salesman.
He worked for Hammarplast, a co that sold coffee machines & filters. On a business trip to Seattle he discovered Starbucks and became so obsessed, he told the founders he wanted to work there.
There's a fun story about the first money the company raised.
Marcos Galperin was a student at Stanford GSB at the time. One day, the famous investor John Muse came to give a lecture...
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To make sure he had a chance to pitch him on his idea for an "eBay in Latin America" Galperin asked if he could drive him back to his private plane after the lecture.
I think RPA can feel a little bit intimidating to newcomers, so I thought I'd put together a super-quick summary of the company.
UiPath in 3 minutes.
👇
TL;DR
- UiPath sells software "robots"
- It was started 16 years ago in Romania
- Its customers are usually big corporations
- It made $607M last year (+81% YoY)
- Founded in Bucharest by 2005
- CEO was a former Microsoft engineer
- Company was a devshop called "DeskOver"
- Pivoted to true RPA in 2013
- Only started scaling after that point