Once upon a time in the concrete jungle of New York City, someone named Burt Shavitz made his living as a photographer. Then, one day, he snapped a picture that changed his life forever: one of an elderly neighbor looking longingly out their window. Burt took a look at the image straight out of a life-alert commercial and thought to himself, “If I don’t get the hell out of here, that’s how I’ll end up. Old and unable to go outside.” Within days, Burt dropped everything and escaped to the wilderness of Maine...

Steve Ells planned to open up a fancy-white-table-cloth type restaurant until he fell in love with burritos...

 It’s 1946 and a 23-year-old guy named Glen Bell decides to open up a hot dog stand in San Bernardino, California. Yes, a hot dog stand...

English 101. Freshman year of college. A young Gilly gets up in front of his classmates and gives a “GillyTalk”. Yes, I just referred to myself in the third person and yes, I gave the best presentation ever. I left my peers wanting an encore, and—little did they know—the inspiration for my talk can be traced back to 1984...

At this point, the GameStop short squeeze has solidified its place in history as one of the stock market’s most legendary events. By popular request, we’ve decided to share GameStop’s origin story (actually, it’s more of an entertaining recap of the company’s early history). Tighten that diamond-handed iron grip you have on your balls of steel, and let’s get into it (also, read ‘til the end for a huge plot twist)...

Today’s Freshly Squeezed Story starts with—you guessed it. Two college roommates. This time, the college is UVA, and the roommates are Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian...

Will Ahmed? He was the fittest player on Harvard’s squash team. From sunrise to sunset, he’d push his body to the limit. Then, the following morning, he’d wake up and do it all over again...

Iqram and Andrew were randomly paired as college roommates their freshman year. Little did they know that—within a decade—they’d make an app together that would revolutionize the way you settle IOU’s with your friends...

While attending college in California, Kevin Systrom fell in love taking pictures (gotta capture the moment)—in fact, Kevin became fell so hard that he built a photo sharing website for all his fraternity bros so they could share their snaps with one another...

Three friends—Jerry, Gordon, and Zev—are inspired to get into the coffee business. In Seattle, Washington circa 1971, they open up a coffee shop. All three founders come from academia. So it’s only natural they name their company after the first mate from Moby Dick: “Starbuck”. They sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment, but there’s no barista—you have to take the beans home and make a latte yourself...