The Idea: In 1991, Tim Sweeney was a 20-year-old mechanical engineering student at the University of Maryland with a side hustle - a computer consulting business called Potomac Computer Systems, run out of his parents' basement. But Tim wasn't interested in fixing computers. He was obsessed with making games. That year, he released ZZT, a text-based puzzle game he built using skills he'd taught himself over 10,000 hours of programming as a teenager. The game sold a few copies a day through shareware - about $100 daily - but it was enough to convince Tim that game development was his future. He renamed his company Epic MegaGames and started recruiting talented developers through messages hidden in his games. The contrarian bet? Instead of just making games, Tim believed the real opportunity was building the tools that let other people make games. This was the beginning of Epic Games.

The Execution:

• 1991: Tim releases ZZT from his parents' basement in Maryland, earning $100/day through shareware distribution - enough to drop out one credit shy of his degree.
• 1998: Epic launches Unreal, a first-person shooter that cost $3M to develop. The game is a hit, but the real prize is the Unreal Engine powering it - other studios start asking to license it.
• 2012: Chinese tech giant Tencent acquires a 40% stake in Epic Games, valuing the company and setting Epic up for the games-as-a-service model.
• 2017: Epic releases Fortnite Battle Royale as a free-to-play game. Within a year, it generates $5.48 billion in revenue with 66.6 million monthly active users.
• 2020: Epic picks a fight with Apple, deliberately violating App Store rules to challenge the 30% fee. The move costs Epic $1 billion in lost revenue and years of legal battles.
• 2024: Disney invests $1.5 billion in Epic at a $22.5 billion valuation to build a persistent Disney universe inside Fortnite.
• 2025: Epic wins its Apple lawsuit. Fortnite returns to the App Store with 650 million registered players and $5.7 billion in annual revenue.

The lesson? Tim bet that tools would outlast any single game - and he was right. The Unreal Engine now powers everything from Fortnite to The Mandalorian's virtual sets. Sometimes the picks and shovels are worth more than the gold.