United Rentals

United Rentals went from formed-on-Labor-Day to NYSE in months, then a $25B company

Jacobs founded United Rentals and within 13 months leapfrogged Hertz to become the world's largest equipment rental company; Merrill Lynch called it the fastest IPO they had ever seen, and the company is now worth roughly $25 billion.

“Within 13 months, we became number one, leapfrogging, leapfrogging Hertz, which had become the equipment rental, which was the number one equipment rental business in 1965. Another thing we did was we went fast, uh, we went public fast. We formed the company on Labor Day weekend and we were trading on the New York Stock Exchange by December.”