TV host Ryan Seacrest denies rumours of suffering a stroke, his rep says he is doing fine

Before he was a business magnate and owner of the Virgin Group, Richard Branson was the founder of a youth-culture magazine. As a 16-year-old, Branson started Student Magazine from the basement of his parents’ house in 1966. He would interview and feature prominent personalities, including Mick Jagger. The billionaire entrepreneur credits the magazine — and the lessons it taught him — for helping him establish Virgin Records and his business empire.

Businessman Kevin O’Leary started SoftKey Software Products, which was later renamed The Learning Company, in his Toronto basement in 1986, with an investment of $10,000 from his mother. He grew the company into a huge operation and even moved it to Boston. In 1999, toy giant Mattel acquired the company for $4.2 billion.

American hip-hop apparel company FUBU was founded by Daymond John, along with J Alexander Martin, Keith Perrin and Carlton Brown, in his basement in 1992. It is reported that John mortgaged his house for $100,000 and invested that money into his company. In 1995, Samsung invested in FUBU. In addition to being a businessman, John is also a motivational speaker, author and a television personality.

In 2001, Carl Rodrigues shut himself away in his basement in the Canadian city of Mississauga to come up with a business idea he would enjoy working on. After a month of working “crazy hours”, Rodrigues came up with the idea of a software system that allowed users to control their mobile phone from their laptops. He named his company SOTI. Despite being hugely successful, Rodrigues turned down many takeover bids, including one from Microsoft. The company, which was valued at $1 billion last year, remains completely owned by Rodrigues and his wife.

In 1882, Dow Jones & Company was founded in the basement of a candy store in New York City by three journalists — Charles Henry Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser. Bergstresser, however, chose to be a silent partner of the firm, whose flagship product is The Wall Street Journal. In 1902, the company was acquired by financial journalist Clarence Barron. It then went under the control of the Bancroft family when Barron left it to his stepdaughter, Jane Bancroft, after he died in 1928. It was taken over by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2007.