The opposite of failure is a success. Everyone on earth is looking for the path to success. The Digital era’s entrepreneurs defined success as “the opposite of failure which takes a person to a higher and unexpected level” Nowadays, the most successful and influential people on earth are entrepreneurs. Do you know? Entrepreneurs are the people who take risks in businesses, to manage, organize and run a company or small business in the hope of a profit. Still, the world’s successful entrepreneurs are the image in the world. Every successful person in the world has a success story, some are from rag-to-rich. I’d like to bring you some of the lessons one has to learn in their stories.
Table of Contents
| 1.0: | Introduction |
|---|---|
| 1: | Jack Ma |
| 2: | WhatsApp Developers |
| 3: | Google and Yahoo! |
| 4: | Larry Ellison |
| 5: | Mubarak Muyika |
| 6: | Bill Gates |
| 7: | Aliko Dangote |
| 8: | Mark Zuckerberg |
| 9: | Mike Adenuga |
Introduction
What kind of life challenges have you ever faced? As stated above, every successful person has a success story, his failure.. Today’s article is all about the story of the top successful people in the world and what drives them to there. Here is the outline below:
Jack Ma
Before I ask, I know you have been hearing the name “Jack Ma”. And the question here is; do you know his success story? Have you ever read his biography? Ma become the global icon in entrepreneurship as well as the most influential successful entrepreneur in the world, because of his persistence that took him to where he is now – the richest man in China as well as one of the wealthiest people in Asia.
Before he attend college, the exam entrance took him four years to pass, the failed three years, and it was just the beginning. He stated that he applied for 30 different jobs and got rejected. “I went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went to the job, and twenty-three were accepted, but I was the only guy who was rejected.” Not only this, he applied 10 times for Harvard and got rejected.
Jack Ma’s success story began when he went to the United States together with his friends and get introduced to the internet. He first launched his website which was related to his country, China. He had received emails from some people from China, guess what? They were all wishing to know about him. The internet was almost unknown in China at that time. Ma, his wife and friends realize that the internet is a great offer. They started a Web Development Company, China Yellow Pages, and within three years, the company made $800,000.
Lesson: Persistence – The only thing that drives Jack Ma to be one of the most successful and wealthiest people in the world is persistence. You’ve seen it. He struggled in many terms and got rejected, but he didn’t give up and that persistence has paid off.
WhatsApp Developers
Brian Acton and Jan Koum founded WhatsApp in 2009. They both worked at Yahoo and left in 2007. Koum was born in 1976 in Kiev, Ukraine to a Jewish family. In 1992, Koum at the age of 16, moved to Mountain View, California with his grandmother where a social support program helped them with an apartment. At first, Koum’s mother worked as a babysitter, while he himself worked as a cleaner at a grocery store. When Koum turns to 18, he became interested in programming and enrolled at San Jose State University. Koum met Brian Acton when Koum was hired by Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer in 1997, while Acton was serving as a security tester at Ernst & Young and shortly became friends.
As the story goes, one day, Koum bought an iPhone in 2009 and realized that the then-seven-month-old App store was about to spawn a whole new industry of apps. At last, he and Acton founded and incorporated WhatsApp on 24th February 2009. Before this, they both applied to work on Facebook but got rejected. Finally, Facebook, Inc. acquired its startup (WhatsApp) in February 2014 for $19.3b.
Acton and Koum failed to work on Facebook, but now Koum is serving as the Managing Director of Facebook and owns $2.4b in Facebook stock, and is still the CEO of WhatsApp.
Lesson: Life – Expect the Unexpected. Jan Koum had never thought that he could be the MD of Facebook, in addition to owning $2.4b Facebook stock.
Google and Yahoo!
Do you the company that ruled the internet for over 10years? In the 90s, Yahoo was the company that was referred to as the icon of the web. It fails, and succeeds – this is business. Back in 1998 when Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin approached Yahoo when they were making the rounds for backing in Silicon Valley. But Yahoo wasn’t interested. Besides this, in 2002 Yahoo had the opportunity to purchase Google for $5bn. But Yahoo wasn’t interested again because the price was too high. As the story goes, Yahoo was nearly able to acquire the popular social network, Facebook for $1bn in 2006, but due to a faltering stock price, Yahoo lowered its offer to $850m, allowing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to walk away from the deal.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in January 1996 as a research project when they were PhD students at Stanford University. In 2016, Verizon announced it was acquiring Yahoo for $4.85bn!
Lesson: No one knows tomorrow – You see how Yahoo refused to buy Google in 1998, and in 2002 at $5bn. What do you think if Google is to be sold today? And Yahoo’s biggest mistake to date was refusing to buy Facebook for $1bn in 2006, it lowered the price to $850m. Today, Facebook can acquire Yahoo a hundred times with its parent company, Verizon. Don’t lose an opportunity when you have it.
Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison was the founder of Oracle Corporation. The 73-years-old man, and the seventh wealthiest person in the world with a fortune of $60.6bn (as of August 2017). He was born to a Jewish mother, while his father was a US Army Air Corps pilot. Unfortunately, Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of 9-months, his mother gave him to her aunt for adoption. Guess what? He did not meet his biological mother until he turns to 48-years-old.
Ellison studied at the University of Illinois to his second year, without graduating and moved to California in 1966 because his adoptive mother had just died. Ellison again attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered computer design. While working at Ampex Corporation in the early 1970s, he became influenced by Edgar F. Codd’s research on a relational database, which led to the formation of Oracle in 1977.
In November 2016, it was reported that Oracle acquired NetSuite for $9.3bn as Ellison owned 35% of NetSuite at the time making him $3.5bn personally. Today, Ellison is the fifth-richest person in the United States as well as the seventh in the world.
Lesson: Orphanage – When it comes to success, it doesn’t matter an orphan or else. Ellison was a paternal orphan who was adopted for 47years.
Mubarak Muyika
The 1994 Kenyan born, a programmer and internet entrepreneur. He is the CEO of Zagace, a company which runs an app store for businesses to access software for accounting, human resources management and marketing. Muyika was born and raised in Western Province, Kenya. His father died in 1996 when he was 2-years-old. Muyika’s orphanage started after the death of his mother in 2004 when he turns to 10-years-old. Muyika’s adoptive parents, his aunt and her husband operated a small book publishing and distribution company, called Acrodile Publishers. Muyika taught himself how to build a better website for the company.
In 2011, Muyika at the age of 16, founded Hype Century Technology & Investment Limited, a company focused on website creation and Webhosting, which led him to receive an award, Anzisha Prize from African Leadership Academy for young entrepreneurs
Lesson: Orphanage – Still, Mubarak Muyika proved that an orphan could do better.
Bill Gates
Have you ever asked yourself why Bill Gates is still the richest man in the world and what drives him there? If not, you have to ask yourself such questions to stop doubting. He was born in 1955 to the William Henry Gates family, a prominent lawyer. Early on in his life, his parents had a law career in mind for him. Gates’ parents feared that their son might be a loner, because of his loneliness. But when time passed, his parents’ desire became useless when he started showing love for computers and programming.
Lesson: Parents’ Desire – Gates’ parents had a law career in their mind. But their desire didn’t fulfil. In life, not everyone’s ambition is fulfilled. Gates’ natural desire is to become a programmer as well as the richest person on earth.
Aliko Dangote
Do you know the person bearing the name – Aliko Dangote? Or have you ever wondered why he remains the richest person in Africa? Aliko Dangote was born in 1957 to a business-oriented household in Kano state, Nigeria. His grandfather, Sanusi Dantata was one of the wealthiest men in West Africa at the time. After the death of Dangote’s father, his grandfather, Sanusi Dantata took and became his de facto guardian. Living with his grandfather exposed him to the different rudiments of entrepreneurship. He learnt about marketing, customer relationship and more. After he earned his first degree in Business Administration from Al-Azhar University, Cairo, in Egypt, in 1977 when he was 21 got a loan of N500,000 ($2,500) from his grandfather to start trade in commodities. He took the loan which was to be repaid within 3years to Lagos with his uncle. At that time, N500,000 could buy one hundred Mercedes Benz in Nigeria. Dangote started importing rice and sugar from different countries; Thailand and Brazil.
As he sold these commodities to the locals, his business growth quickly exploded with high revenues, sometimes reaching net profits of $10,000+ daily. Do you know why? He returned his grandfather’s loan in 3months instead of the agreed 3years.
Lesson: Taking Risks – Risk is not only jumping down in an aeroplane but one of the top habits of entrepreneurs. Dangote’s loan of N500,000 at that time was very risky, but he did not lose a chance to win.
Mark Zuckerberg
The 33-years-old programmer was born in 1984 in New York, United States. Mark Zuckerberg was the founder of the world’s second-largest most visited website, Facebook. He co-founded Facebook together with his college roommates at Harvard University in February 2004. Zuckerberg is the fifth richest person in the world with a net worth of $71.5bn (as of September 2017). In 2004, Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year in order to complete his project, i.e to manage and build Facebook.
Zuckerberg and his friends moved to Palo Alto, California in Silicon Valley where they leased a small house that served as an office. Then Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel, who invested in the company. This gave them the opportunity to find an office, and they found their first office in mid-2004. Zuckerberg reported that their group decided to return to Harvard but eventually remained in California. On 28th May 2017, Zuckerberg received an honorary degree from Harvard University. He posted on his Facebook wall “Mom, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree”
Lesson: Succeed without a degree – Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc proved that it doesn’t matter with or without a degree in order to succeed.
Mike Adenuga
The second-richest person in Nigeria and third in Africa, Mike Adenuga was born in 1953 in Ibadan, Nigeria. Adenuga’s father Michael Adenuga was a school teacher, while his mother Juliana Adenuga was a businesswoman of royal Ijebu descent. Adenuga worked as a taxi driver to help fund his university education. It was reported that when Adenuga earned his first degree in Business Administration at Pace University, New York, took over his mother’s small business and sold laces, coca-cola, and other commodities. In 1990, Adenuga got an oil-drilling license from the Nigerian government and realized he had struck gold, when in 1991, his company discovered oil in shallow waters of southwestern Ondo state, Nigeria.
Today, Adunuga has investments in telecommunications, banking and oil and gas. His company, Globacom is Nigeria’s second-largest telecom operator, and also in Ghana and Benin. His net worth is estimated to be $5.8bn (as of 2017)
Lesson: Poor people also succeed – In life, not only the rich kids succeed. Adenuga was once a taxi driver, he had never dreamed to be on this stage today.
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