Anyone who decides to finally take the plunge and start their journey towards successful entrepreneurship must read some inspiring stories of successful entrepreneurs. It does not only give you the required push but is also mighty motivating and reassuring as well, especially if one’s getting cold feet. Entrepreneurship is a lot of hard work, patience, and perseverance. Here are a few of my favourite entrepreneurial success stories that I hope can enthuse you in the best possible way!
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Brian Chesky & Joe Gebbia:
They moved to New York in search of employment and ended up giving the world Airbnb! They started with providing people who couldn’t find accommodation in the city with basic blow up beds and breakfast. However, they did face a lot of struggles, and failure wasn’t at bay. Brian and Joe did not give up and also sold cereals at one point to fund their start-up. Their hard work eventually paid off, as we can all see today!
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Travis Kalanick & Garett Camp:
It was a cold night in Paris when the founders were stuck without a cab in sight when the idea of UBER was born, and the rest is history! Their app went live in San Francisco and had their 1st customer in 2009, and by 2011 they had already started launching internationally. The founders did face a lot of backlash due to their attitude towards their employees. Eventually, Travis was forced to resign, which is also a big learning for all aspiring entrepreneurs!
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Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger:
Born out of love for photography, Instagram came from “instant” and “telegram”. Before Mike joined Kevin in this venture, the app was called Burbn after Kevin’s favourite drink. The earlier version did not have any filters suggested by his wife while they were on holiday. Instagram was finally launched in 2010 and had over 25000 downloads within the 1st 24 hours! Today, Instagram is a social media entertainment site and a medium for many businesses and entrepreneurs!
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Jan Koum:
Today, even if for 5 minutes whats app server is down, it sends the whole world in a frenzy! We need to thank Jan Koum for bringing the world a little closer by using technology and providing us with a messaging service so efficient, free of cost! Jan emigrated from Ukraine to the US as a child, started his career with yahoo. When he got rejected for a job at Facebook, he began creating an app that could have a status against everyone on your address book that would tell you if the person was busy. It wasn’t an easy process, and creating backend codes was very tedious that he wanted to give up a few times! When people started sending messages via whats app, he realized the potential and eventually developed it into a full-blown messaging app that could be used across IOS and Android.
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Eric Yuan:
If there is one word that the world has heard the most since the outbreak of covid 19, it’s “ZOOM”, and we have Eric Yuan to thank for it! It was the long-distance relationship with his girlfriend in university that made him create this app. While he worked at Cisco, he wanted to build a smartphone-friendly video conferencing system, which they rejected. He quit and decided to make it on his own. From the beginning, this journey for Eric was full of obstacles. His US visa was denied 8 times before he finally was given the go-ahead. Even after launching zoom, getting financial support was not easily achieved, but Eric never gave up, and the result today is here for all of us to see!
The journey of an entrepreneur is never a bed of roses, there is a lesson to be learnt at every step and every turn, however every great success story of an entrepreneur has one thing in common; the strong determination to follow through with what you believe in and know the personality traits that you are expert in! Every time you feel like giving up, remind yourself of the happiness and satisfaction that lies at the other end of it!
