Tech Founders who failed miserably earlier in life
It’s not uncommon to read up press coverage of successful founders and come away with the impression that they could not have failed one day in their lives. Like, how could Mark Cuban, popular Shark Tank investor and rockstar entrepreneur ever have failed at anything? Turns out Cuban has a failure story capable of reassuring a floundering founder.
Mark Cuban: Shark Tank investor. Co-founder, Broadcast.com
Mark Cuban was so clumsy he couldn’t open a bottle a wine. This clumsiness was why he was sacked as a waiter. Before he went on to found his internet radio company, Broadcast.com – that he would later sell to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999 – he also failed as a carpenter, as a cook and as a powdered milk salesman.
He says of his failures, “I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how many times you failed. You only have to be right once. I tried to sell powdered milk. I was an idiot lots of times, and I learned from them all.”
Hiten Shah: Co-founder at KISSmetrics
Before founding the web analytics company, KissMetrics, Hiten failed at launching a web hosting company. According to him, he “spent over 1 million dollars on a web hosting company that never launched”.
The team made the mistake of building out every detail of the product before attempting to understand what the customer cared for. By the time they realized no one needed their solution, 1 million had already gone into development.
Written by: Gbenga Onalaja
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