Startups often become successful in the most amazing ways.
As our entrepreneurial heroes go through everyday lives, they are often pulled by various emotions. More often then not, they encounter numerous obstacles and circumstances that they fall prey to.
Circumstances where regardless of their good intentions things don’t turn out the way they expect them to be. Yet, an idea that wasn’t given much of attention often gets a big breakthrough contrary to circumstances. Today, I am going to shed light on some of the craziest startup ideas that no one ever thought could even see the light of success. Yet, they have become quite the traction for audiences.
Of course, failure isn’t something that any of us can take inspiration from, but it sure does give us enough motivation to carve out a new path; a path that helps us reach desirable levels of successes.
Here are some dramatic failures of entrepreneurs which turned into an astounding success.
Rovio
One of the largest success stories in the mobile gaming world is none other but Rovio. The company laid the foundation of the first notoriously famous and highly addictive smart mobile game called Angry Birds. The franchise launched back in December 2024 gradually became a famous release with over a billion downloads till 2012. Soon the company started exploring other avenues and transited from video games to merchandising, television shows, accessories and much more. Companies like Rovio, who could’ve thought that they even might’ve suffered a string of failures in the past.
From the year 2003 to the year 2009, the company Rovio suffered greatly in achieving something big. It was not until the game Angry Birds got its massive breakthrough in the gaming industry.
Before that, the company developed and released more than 51 game titles and they were all failures.
Apple
The story of Steve Jobs and Apple isn’t anything new to us. No list that involves failures can truly be completed until it doesn’t have Steve Jobs on it. With Jobs, the story was completely different, because project successes and failures were more of a roller coaster ride for Jobs. The company initially had massive success during their earlier years of development. And suddenly, their profit margins spiral down and Job was sadly forced out of Apple – the company which he found back in 1985. Imagine the loss; the loss of being driven out of a firm that you created for yourself. Even though they removed the main person from the company, it was still going down the drain even after Job’s departure.
Back in 1997, when Apple was just a few months away from bankruptcy, Steve Jobs came back to the organization and by 2011 transformed Apple into one of the largest smart technology organizations.
What if Jobs wouldn’t have planned to come back to the organization, imagine how different the world would’ve been for all of us. A world without iPhones, Tablets, iMacs, iPods and more.
Reid Hoffman’s Story
How many of you have heard about Reid Hoffman? He started off with a company named SocialNet back in 1997. Reid started out as a social networking website which was intended to provide users with a powerful networking platform. This platform was solely focused on creating a site for dating. However, the website didn’t turn out to be a success story and instead turned into a major failure.
Apparently, the Internet wasn’t prepared for something like a dating website during that time period.
It shows that Reid’s idea was of a startup that was too early from its time. That failure made Reid take a different step. Unlike others, he didn’t give up on his entrepreneurial journey and created a business platform called LinkedIn. It turned out to be a successful company and was later on, purchased by Microsoft for just around $26 billion in 2016. Today, LinkedIn is the largest business platform.
Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon
Jeff Bezos is a very calculated man from the modern day world. He owns one of the richest online markets and has made a massive amount of business in a relatively short span of time. Even the most brilliant and successful man in the world had his fair share of failures. So if you think you’re the only one on the failure list right now, then believe me… you’re not! There are many others just like you.
Jeff launched an auction site called zShops which readily failed in its early stage. That failure fueled Jeff Bezos confidence and led him to launch a site called Amazon. He worked on a different strategy.
When he started Amazon, Jeff invested a large sum of budget in kids toys and books. He purchased toys worth millions and stocked them up at a warehouse for Christmas season. Half of these toys he gave away for free! As a result, the company had to face some failure but Jeff was okay with that.
Why? Because that open-heartedness was what made Jeff one of the richest people in the world.
The Story of Canva’s Founder
How many of you have used Canva to build your banners? Well, I know I have. For all those who don’t know what Canva is and how it can be a suitable option for your business, it is a drag and drop graphic design platform powered by Melanie Perkins. Today, it has become a successful drag and drop graphic design software. However, Melanie’s story hasn’t been the only true story governed by success. She started out as a university design instructor and had faced over a 100 rejections.
However, she had her hopes held high and she knew that the world of Internet is vast.. And there are plenty of opportunities present on the Internet. All she had to do was find the one that befits her need.
Observing how many businesses face difficulty when it comes to graphic designs, she created a remarkable tool which allowed millions to create graphic designs directly from their browsers.
Canva provided ease to business owners and hence, it became quite a success story in the world.
