People Who Left A Cozy Nest To Start The Hard Way

Fremont: Google, Apple, Microsoft, ebay, Amazon, are all big names which are the dream companies for many an individuals. Not only do they offer a fat salary package, but also a challenging work environment. Not that the companies are not doing well, but the brainstorming sessions employees go through help brilliant ideas to sprout up, which make them leave behind their high paying jobs to don the role of entrepreneur. Here are few companies started by the ex-executives of the big giants.

Sabeer Batia: The Co-Founder Of Hotmail

Saber Bhatia and Jack Smith co-founded Hotmail, a free email provider, in 1996. Bhatia and Smith were Engineers at Apple Computers. The company initially ran under Solaris for its mail services and Apache on FreeBSD for web services before being converted to Microsoft products. Microsoft reportedly acquired Hotmail in 1997 for $400 million.

The company had raised funding from Menlo Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In 1999, Bhatia left Microsoft to start an ecommerce firm Arzoo along with Yogesh Patel.