Garage partners, dorm-room roommates and one pair who sold ice cream from a gas station. Each duo built something bigger than either founder alone.
1Steve Jobs & Steve WozniakFounded Apple in 1976: Wozniak built the Apple I and II, Jobs sold them and set the vision.1000pts
2Brian Chesky & Joe GebbiaDesign-school friends who rented air mattresses in their San Francisco flat and turned it into Airbnb.731pts
3Larry Page & Sergey BrinStanford PhD students who started Google as a research project in 1998.577pts
4Ben Cohen & Jerry GreenfieldSchool friends who opened an ice-cream shop in a Vermont gas station in 1978 and built Ben & Jerry's.500pts
5Reed Hastings & Marc RandolphFounded Netflix in 1997 as a DVD-by-mail service before it moved to streaming.500pts
6Warren Buffett & Charlie MungerRan Berkshire Hathaway together for almost 60 years as chairman and vice chairman.500pts
7Kevin Systrom & Mike KriegerStanford graduates who launched Instagram in 2010 and sold it to Facebook for 1 billion dollars two years later.409pts
8Chad Hurley & Steve ChenFormer PayPal colleagues who co-founded YouTube in 2005.300pts
9Robert Noyce & Gordon MooreLeft Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968 to found Intel.300pts
10Bill Gates & Paul AllenChildhood friends from Seattle who founded Microsoft in 1975.300pts
11Mark Zuckerberg & Eduardo SaverinHarvard roommates who launched Facebook from a dorm room in 2004.300pts
12Jerry Yang & David FiloStanford students whose list of favourite websites became Yahoo in 1994.0pts
13Steve Huffman & Alexis OhanianUniversity of Virginia roommates who founded Reddit in 2005 in Y Combinator's first batch and sold it to Condé Nast in 2006.
14Bill Hewlett & David PackardStanford classmates who founded Hewlett-Packard in 1939 in a Palo Alto garage, now a California historic landmark.
Photo credits
- Larry Page & Sergey Brin — Ehud Kenan, CC BY 2.0
- Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield — Megan Robertson from New York, NY, United States, CC BY 2.0
- Robert Noyce & Gordon Moore — Intel Free Press, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Jerry Yang & David Filo — Mitchell Aidelbaum from San Francisco, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0
- Steve Huffman — Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0, cropped, in a collage
- Alexis Ohanian — Xuthoria, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped, in a collage
Comments 2
Wozniak designed the Apple I by hand and Jobs found the buyers; Page and Brin started Google as a Stanford research project: https://youpick.best/articles/steve-jobs-ranked-many-ways
YP
ypb-teamSep 29Huffman and Ohanian sold Reddit in 2006 and took it public in 2024, a second act few duos on this list ever got: https://youpick.best/articles/reddit-ranked-many-ways
YP
ypb-teamNov 5
