1. Jan Kum
Kum was born in Kiev, but in the 90s he moved with his mother to Mountain View (California). There he started as a janitor at a grocery store, and for a while they survived on food stamps.
At the age of 18, Koum became interested in programming and decided to learn on his own. At 19, he joined the w00w00 hacker group, and from that moment his career as a programmer began. After working at Yahoo for a while, he left, deciding to start his own startup, which evolved into WhatsApp.
The app was released in 2009 and was downloaded only a couple of hundred people – mostly friends of Kum. After such a failure, Ian decided to quit WhatsApp and return to work, but his partner Brian Acton persuaded him to wait. And over time, this messenger has become one of the most popular in the world.
2. Bethany Hamilton
Bethany started surfing as a child. At the age of 13, she lost her left arm after being attacked by a shark. And it almost cost the girl her life. But in spite of everything, a month later Hamilton returned again. on the desk.
And two years later, she took first place in the women’s Explorer division at the NSSA National Championship. Now Bethany is also writing, and her shark bite board is on display at the California Surfing Museum.
3. Benjamin Franklin
Franklin’s father really wanted to give his son an education, but his funds were enough , only to pay for two years of schooling. However, this did not stop Franklin from being a passionate book lover, inventing the lightning rod and bifocals, and becoming one of America’s founding fathers.
4. Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey had to leave school at the age of 15 and start working because his father’s money was sorely lacking. The future comedian, as well as his brothers and sisters, had to clean and wash toilets at the Titanium Wheels factory, and for some time his whole family lived in a minibus.
Jim’s first performance as a comedian was a failure. Only two years later, Kerry decided to perform again, and then success awaited him. Jim has become one of the best comedians of our time.
5. Stephen King
King’s first novel was rejected by editors 30 times, and Stephen threw it in the trash, disillusioned with his abilities. Later, his wife Tabitha found the manuscript and persuaded the author to finish it and send it to the publisher.
This work was the novel “Carrie”, which subsequently brought the writer 200 thousand dollars (2 million at the current exchange rate). Sold worldwide to date over 350 million copies of Stephen King books. And he is called the real “king of horrors.”
6. JK Rowling
Before gaining mainstream recognition, Jo was a divorced single mother living on welfare and suffering from clinical depression. She said that was as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.
When the first Harry novel was completed, Rowling could not publish it for a year – the manuscript was rejected by 12 publishers. However, today “Harry Potter” is a real phenomenon, and JK Rowling is one of the richest writers on the planet.
7. Michael Jordan
Many basketball fans consider Michael Jordan to be the best player on the planet. Yes, what is there, his name is well known even to those who do not follow the sport at all. And this despite the fact that in his youth, Jordan was expelled from the school team, and then in college they refused to be accepted into the basketball team. However, the athlete did not give up and continued to train until he achieved what he wanted.
As he later claimed : “I’ve missed over 9,000 punches in my career. I lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to make the winning roll and missed. I have experienced failure after failure in my life. And that’s why I’ve been successful.”
8. Thomas Edison
The inventor of the light bulb and the phonograph, Thomas Edison, was known for his perseverance. As a child, he was a frail and sickly child, and teachers considered him narrow-minded. He did not finish school – his mother gave him a home education.
Edison’s first inventions – a device for counting votes in parliament and a device for automatically recording exchange rates – turned out to be of no interest to anyone. But later, his gold and stock bulletin telegraphy system was bought by a New York company for $40,000. As a result, Edison became the owner of almost four thousand patents around the world.
The inventor tried thousands of prototypes before he created a functioning light bulb. “I didn’t fail,” he said. he, I just created 10,000 options that don’t work. It remains to find one that works.”
9. Richard Branson
Born into the family of a lawyer and a flight attendant, Branson found it very difficult to study: he suffered from dyslexia, received poor grades and constantly flunked exams. But instead of accepting, Richard decided to go into business. He founded a record company, saving on everything – he even delivered records to retail outlets in London in his own car.
Today, Branson has a huge fortune, which he amassed through his conglomerate of Virgin companies. He is one of the richest residents of the UK, with more than five billion dollars at his disposal.
10. Elon Musk
Now Musk is on everyone’s lips. He makes electric cars, reusable rockets, solar panels, and drills tunnels for Hyperloop vacuum trains. But the billionaire did not reach this immediately – the list of Elon’s failures is long. As big as all his companies were, so were the failures.
He practically went bankrupt PayPal and was removed from his position as CEO of PayPal and Tesla. The launch of the first SpaceX rocket into space ended in failure and breakdown at the start three times. And only for the fourth once Musk invested all his money, owed huge sums and almost went bankrupt, the launch was successful and the company was reborn like a phoenix.
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