What super-successful entreprenuers had a first time failure | Hacker News Reader

What super-successful entreprenuers had a first time failure

7 pointsshalmanese7 comments

A friend and I were going down the list of technology companies which we consider "super successful", google, facebook, microsoft, ebay, apple, twitter, paypal, skype, oracle, amazon etc.

In all of these cases, for the founder of the company, their first attempt at starting a company resulted in a "success". It may not have been the success that was their super success but it was still a success.

Can you come up with any counter-examples to this phenomena? ie: a "super-successful" founder who's first venture was decisively a failure?

If not, what does this imply for all of us who have already had a first time failure? Are we destined to never become "super successful"?

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You may not have it quite right. You may be looking for "utter failures". But that does not necessarily have to be the case. Zuckerburg had other ventures, it wasn't that they were utter failures, it was rather that he just kept chugging along.

I think that's a better answer to watch out for. Successful people are actively chugging along. They don't stop.

I don't know these guys' stories too well but I would bet they actively did stuff all their lives.

It's probably not exactly what you're looking for, but you seem to have the idea that it's possible to "just succeed."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r47UqYMDN2k

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ3C9SP8xRE

Those who seem to have "just succeeded" are the lucky -- and yes, it is luck -- minority. That's simply not the way things usually work.

Completely the opposite! I'm utterly baffled that I couldn't come up with a counter-example off the top of my head. I thought the "first time founder" phenomena would end up being the minority of cases.

Then again, you can't call recent startups successes until they've had longevity. Cromemco, Northgate, Osborne, et al.

If you pay attention to TV, you can find people who starred in a TV series and then basically disappeared after that. Some of these series didn't even last a season, But when they got the part and were doing it, they probably thought they had succeeded. Did they?

Evan Williams (blogger,twitter) tells it differently. As I remember it, there was a web consulting company when he lived in Nebraska that ended poorly.

Thanks Tony! For Ev, I counted blogger as his "first time success". His wiki doesn't list anything about his web consulting company.

Bill Gates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traf-O-Data

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