Bell forms his company (1877) : but sales are slow ..

Within a year of making the first telephone call, Bell and his financial backers - Thomas Sanders and Gardiner G Hubbard - had formed the Bell Telephone Company in the United States.

Unsurprisingly, early demand for the telephone was not great and prior to forming their company Bell and his partners had struggled in their attempts to promote the new invention.
At one point they even offered to sell the Bell patents to the Western Union Telegraph Company - Elisha Gray's employers - for $100,000. The offer was spurned - a decision the Western Union was soon to regret bitterly.