Businesses founded in a downturn

You hear a lot of chat about recessions being a great time to start companies.  Here is a list of some that were, courtesy of Steve Jurvetson.

1. 1870 – Standard Oil (Exxon, Chevron)
2. 1873 – GE
3. 1923 – Disney
4. 1928 – Motorola
5. 1939 – HP
6. 1940 – McDonalds
7. 1975 – Microsoft
8. 1976 – Apple
9. 1977 – Oracle
10. 1980 – CNN
11. 1981 – MTV
12. 1984 – Dell
13. 1984 – Cisco
14. 2000 – Baidu
15. 2001 – Wikipedia
16. 2002 – Skype

There are a couple of good ones there