

Marine Bob Parsons had started two companies - one of which was Parsons Technology, a software company he sold to Intuit for $64 million in 1994 - before he launched GoDaddy (GDDY, +0.64%), the $4 billion web domain registrar. It was sold to LinkedIn in April 2015 for $1.5 billion. Designing Web Graphics sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was the springboard to what would become, an Internet-based training company she started with her husband Bruce Heavin. In 1995, after struggling to find a book on web design to recommend to her students, she decided to write her own. The self-taught computer whiz and former graphic arts professor recognized early on the potential of the Internet and the need for her students to learn how to publish to the web.Though it’s not without its struggles, the $9 billion company continues to endure today.

In 1991, it stopped selling Levi’s entirely. The Gap (GPS, +0.38%) quickly expanded to new locations and, in 1974, introduced its own denim label. At the time, they only sold Levi’s jeans Fisher had convinced the denim giant to let him open a hip store that contained all sizes and styles of its jeans, as department stores carried spotty inventory.

