When job seeking, there are times when everyone feels like they’re constantly hitting a brick wall. Your inbox is filled with apologetic rejection emails, or sometimes not even that.
It can be very easy to think that you’re never going to get anywhere, and that it’d be easier, and make more sense, to just take the easiest job that comes along and put your dreams on hold.
Well, it might be easier, but that’s not what the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and recent billionaire Brian Action did. These digital heroes failed, failed and failed again before their big break came around to help them make their mark on the digital industry.
So, if you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps and don’t really feel like job seeking today, these failure-to-success stories should cheer you up and give you some inspiration!
1.) Bill Gates
One of the more famous failures is Microsoft founder and richest-man-in-the-world Bill Gates.
Before his rise to fame and fortune, Bill had dropped out of Harvard University and set up a company called Traf-O-Data with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The company was supposed to “read the raw data from roadway traffic counters and create reports for traffic engineers”. Through this, it would supposedly solve traffic issues forever.
The company failed spectacularly when trying to push its first product and sell it to a company. It failed because the machine didn’t work. Whoops.
However, this didn’t put Bill off, who went on to create Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company, and now has a net worth of £46 billion. Not bad, right?!
2.) Akio Morita
You might not have heard of Akio Morita, but he was the co-founder of Sony before he died in 1999.
Digital electronics company is seen as one of the biggest players in the industry – but it had a stumbling start with founder Akio’s disastrous attempt at selling rice cookers.
The product, designed to cook rice, went a step too far and actually burnt it instead. With only 100 units sold, it wasn’t exactly the best moment for Sony.
Not being put off, Akio and Sony powered on, and now the company is worth billions of pounds – just not selling rice cookers!
3.) Steve Jobs
Apple hero Steve Jobs is a digital genius worshipped by people across the globe, but his rise to fame wasn’t so simple.
Steve developed several products with Apple, most notably the Lisa personal computer which saw him kicked out of the very company he founded.
He then went on to create another company called NeXT, which also failed due to hardware issues.
Steve returned to Apple when he was 30, creating the iPod, iPhone and iPad, changing the tech industry forever and firmly placing himself in the history books.
4.) Nick Woodman
Nick Woodman – the founder of hugely successful wearable camera brand GoPro – didn’t always have a steady rise to billionairedom.
As a lot of people did, Nick jumped on the dotcom bandwagon and created two failed online start-ups.
The first of which was EmpowerAll.com, a site selling cheap electronics to a young audience. It failed to make any profit, so folded.
Undeterred, Nick set up FunBug in 1999, which was an online marketing company centered on a website that offered users the chance to win prizes if they took part in sweepstakes. He had to close the company in 2001 when he couldn’t maintain a profitable user base, despite raising $3.9 million in investor funding – oops!
Despite the failures, Nick took some time out and re-entered the entreprenurial world with GoPro, which has made him one of the youngest billionaires in the world!
5.) Brian Acton
Finally, one of the best failure to success stories ever, that only came out this month.
Brian Acton, co-founder of mobile messaging service WhatsApp, had a bit of a jittery start in the tech world.
He worked at Yahoo until leaving in 2009. After leaving Yahoo, he applied for jobs at Twitter and Facebook, but was rejected from both! Ironically, he vented his anger on Twitter:
Got denied by Twitter HQ. That's ok. Would have been a long commute.
— Brian Acton (@brianacton) May 23, 2009
Facebook turned me down. It was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. Looking forward to life's next adventure.
— Brian Acton (@brianacton) August 3, 2009
In the same year, Brian joined up with friend Jan Koum and created WhatsApp. And guess what? They sold it to Facebook for £11 billion this month. Talk about payback!
So there we go, five famous digital failures who went on to become million(and billion)aires! I hope this has inspired you in your job search!
Do you have any other failure-to-success stories to share? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter @BubbleJobs! :)
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