What's the best startup story you ever heard?

If you've never read how Kenneth Cole (shoe/fashion company) started out by launching a movie production company, it's a great story: http://www.kennethcole.com/scripts/aboutus/ourstory.asp

James Dyson's story is one of the most interesting startup stories I know. Trying to sell your technology and everyone ignoring you...

http://www.bestchoicevacuums.com/dyson-story.html

Once someone told me about a guy who invented the disk brake, he went to a racing team to offer it, but they told him "we're looking for something to speed up our cars, not to slow them down."

At the end, disk brakes helped a lot in racing because drivers could reduce speed in less time which gave them more time to accelerate.

(I don't know if this is a true story or just a joke, but its a great story!)

I just read about the 17 year old founder of whateverlife.com yesterday. That is a great story.

Gary Dahl, "inventor" of the pet rock.

http://www.petsdo.com/blog/pet-rock-made-man-multi-millionai...

Of all the stories in Founders at Work I think my favorite is Wozniak's. It still amazes me that he made the entire Apple II by himself, both hardware and software.

I would say Viaweb and/or Vermeer purely because there is so much information about them.

My personal favorite is the story of the Lycos founder in "Founders at Work". The guy just got a call from a VC, saying "we will give you money if you run a company with this great search technology we bought".

Epiphyte: http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/1999-December/000074...

I enjoy reading about the early days of Netscape:

http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html

Please help keep all these stories at: http://startupflames.com/

"The New New Thing" by Michael Lewis