Achieving success is most often a considerable challenge that small businesses face. Many even call it quits early, with up to 20 percent of new companies failing in their first two years. This is why when entrepreneurs hit some level of achievement, it can indeed be inspirational. These entrepreneur success stories provide the motivation you need to scale your business.
Peeking into how these individuals developed their businesses to succeed can give you the insight and direction to find your path towards fulfillment. And instead of watching in amazement from the sidelines, you can work harder to be part of and create your own entrepreneur success stories. Here are some entrepreneurs who started humbly and rose through the grains to attain outstanding achievements and successes:
1. Eric Yuan
Image Credit: Forbes.com
Chinese-American businessman and engineer Eric Yuan is the CEO and founder of Zoom Video Communications, better known as Zoom. The video-teleconferencing software is now one of the most used communication platforms globally, with more than three hundred million participants daily. Considering that Yuan first developed the software as a means to “visit” his girlfriend to ease the 10-hour train ride distance of their relationship, it certainly has gone a long way. Yuan, who owns twenty-two percent of the company, has a net worth of $6.4 Billion and managed to build a $35 Billion video conferencing empire in just nine years.
How Yuan grew his business:
Before being among only a handful of Chinese Americans who now lead a major Silicon Valley company, Yuan was a worker. He had an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics and a master’s degree in engineering. He spent four years working in Japan before moving to California to work for an internet startup in Silicon Valley.
Prior to founding Zoom, he was a vice president at telecommunications company Cisco Systems. He also worked for WebEx, which Cisco acquired. Yuan had the idea of incorporating video into telephone-based conferencing systems and making it more user-friendly. He pitched the idea to CIsco in 2011, but his idea was shot down.
This led Yuan to leave the company to establish his own. In Zoom’s earlier days, he was involved in every part of the business, from coding to customer service. He would even personally email every customer who canceled Zoom’s initial services. Even before the global pandemic, Zoom had been experiencing a steady rise in terms of users.
It was, however, during the mandated lock-downs that Zoom’s practicability became hugely popular. Now, more than 750,000 companies utilize the video-conferencing platform. It provided a user-friendly and fun means of video-conferencing in real-time made communication more realistic. This means of working and socializing online grew Zoom’s share price exponentially.
Major Challenges:
Prior to its mainstream acceptance, Yuan encountered plenty of challenges on his path to founding Zoom. Even his entry into the United States became an eight-time application process to gain visa approval. After years of working at Silicon Valley, his pitch to Cisco for a smartphone-friendly video conferencing system wasn’t taken seriously. When he left Cisco to create Zoom, he found it hard to convince investors to back his new venture.
People thought that the market was already crowded and that Zoom had no space to thrive in. To raise capital and launch the company, Yuan had to borrow money from friends and family. His resilience and determination led to a success that brought forth a more dependable product and was fun to use. And despite its humble early beginnings, Zoom had become one of the most successful IPOs in 2019, with its share price rising seventy-two percent on its first day of trading.
Key Takeaway:
Of the many entrepreneur success stories, Eric Yuan’s is genuinely aspirational. He’s a hardworking and hands-on CEO who works busy 18-hour working days. When he arrived in the US, he spoke very little English and chose to put all his focus on work. “For the first several years, I was just writing code, and I was extremely busy,” Yuan said.
Even now, Yuan rarely takes any work trips, opting to take Zoom calls to spend more time with his family. When his wife doubted his decision to leave Cisco and create Zoom, Yuan held firm. He told her, “I know it’s a long journey and very hard, but if I don’t try it, I’ll regret it.” So work hard, stay the course and find success along the way.
2. Jack Ma
Image Credit: bworldonline.com
In 2014, Alibaba founder and business magnate Jack Ma became the richest man in China, reaching a net worth of over $25 Billion. By 2021, Ma increased his net worth to $42.3 Billion to become the 32nd richest person in the world. Of the entrepreneur success stories featured here, Ma’s is truly a rags-to-riches tale.
Growing up poor in communist China and having faced incredible challenges along the way, it’s inspiring to think how he managed to succeed. He wasn’t a genius-level individual with vast technical knowledge, nor did he even have a straightforward business plan. Yet, by thinking big, Jack Ma managed to build one of the largest e-commerce empires in the world.
How Ma grew his business:
Despite not having money or any connections, Ma knew that he could only get ahead through education. After graduating college in 1988, he sent as many job applications as possible to find work. He started as an English teacher and eventually put up a translation business.
In 1995, he traveled to the US to assist a Chinese firm and was captivated by the internet. His first online search was for “beer,” and he found that there were no Chinese beer options in the results. This was when he realized that an internet company for China would be his lifelong mission. After four years and two failed attempts, he secured funding from seventeen of his friends to start a little online marketplace he dubbed “Alibaba.”
Back then, the site showcased export products that customers in China could purchase directly through the platform. By 1999, Ma’s e-commerce startup had raised more than $25 Million from outside investment.
In 2005, tech giant Yahoo invested $1 Billion into Alibaba for a forty percent stake in the company. Aside from offering something ahead of everyone in such a huge market potential region such as China at the time, Ma’s drive was his personality and passion. He kept his team and employees happy by maintaining a sense of fun while working.
His motivational style for his team included having them do headstands during breaks to keep their energy going. He would always tell his employees, “We will make it because we are young, and we never, never give up.”. This encouraged close-knit relationships within his team, and they all worked hard to achieve success.
Major Challenges:
Jack Ma’s entrepreneurial success story is one of achieving victory through countless failures. Aside from his humble poor beginnings, he also failed his college entrance exam twice. Nevertheless, he believed that attaining a degree would be his key to success, and he strived hard to achieve that goal.
After graduating, he was rejected from more than a dozen job applications, including an application into the global fast-food chain, KFC. This didn’t dampen his spirits, though, and he would use his English-speaking skills to good use as a translator and later on as an English teacher.
Even when he geared towards putting up his internet company, his first two ventures ultimately failed before he founded Alibaba. When he was asked about his failures and rejections, Ma simply said, “Well, I think we have to get used to it. We’re not that good.” Accepting setbacks and overcoming rejection and failure allowed Ma to learn and grow, to work harder to achieve his goals.
Key Takeaway:
Jack Ma is known for his cheerful demeanor, who never allowed himself to feel disadvantaged despite his countless challenges to achieve success. In the face of adversities and rejections, Ma is always one to see the opportunities by being positive. “We keep fighting.
We keep changing ourselves. We don’t complain” is one mantra that Jack Ma is known to espouse. As a determined entrepreneur, Jack Ma always encouraged people to “Think Big.” He considers thinking big and having ambitious goals to be more important than technical knowledge to achieve entrepreneurial success.
Entrepreneurial success isn’t a result of academic prowess or book knowledge but is instead a product of learning that becomes intuition and gut feeling. As one of the most inspirational entrepreneurial success stories, Ma is a testament to accumulated experience being the path to achieving success.
3. Mark Cuban
Image Credit: womleadmag.com
Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is most known as a decisive investor on the reality-TV show “Shark Tank,” whose insight for business is truly inspirational. Like most entrepreneur success stories, Cuban’s started when he was young and needed to work to buy a pair of basketball shoes. Through this desire, Cuban established a path to entrepreneurship that would lead him to success.
He would later sell his businesses to propel himself even further and is now the owner of the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA as well as a film distribution company. In addition, Cuban is a philanthropist and author with a net worth of $4.5 Billion while showcasing his business acumen for potential budding entrepreneurs on Shark Tank.
How Cuban grew his business:
Mark Cuban found his success in business through a lifetime of entrepreneurship and taking risks. When he was twelve, his father told him he had to work and earn money to buy a new pair of basketball shoes he wanted. So, Mark went door to door in his community selling garbage bags.
After graduating from the Indiana University of Bloomington, Cuban started working for a bank in Pittsburgh before moving to Dallas in 1982. There, he found work selling software while also putting up his own software consulting business, Micro Solutions. Cuban had a keen understanding of software and computers, which accelerated the traction of his business.
In 1990, Cuban sold Micro Solutions for $6 Million. This gave him the opportunity to venture into other businesses and invest in several startups. In 1995, Cuban and his business partner Todd Wagner established an internet radio company named Audio Net.
The company, renamed Broadcast.com, pioneered audio streaming and online video and would be among Cuban’s greatest successes. Broadcast would later be sold to Yahoo for $5.7 Billion in 1999. By 2000, Mark purchased the NBA team Dallas Mavericks and turned the mediocre franchise into a commercial and athletic success.
Major Challenges:
Throughout Cuban’s life, he encountered challenges that he considers as tremendous learning opportunities. For example, he got fired from several jobs early in his career and was even ragged on by a software company CEO due to his hand-me-down shirt appearance.
Cuban commented on this, saying, “I learned it’s not how you look, it’s what you can do. You just have to go out there and do the work.” He’s also been able to rebound from significant setbacks, such as being accused and later on getting cleared of insider trading. Although, to Cuban, these setbacks are all learning experiences, “I learned so much about what not to do, how not to manage, how important certain things are.”
Key Takeaway:
Cuban’s lifelong path of entrepreneurship highlights the truth that there are no shortcuts in achieving success. He stayed focused on the efforts that only he could control. Cuban said, “Work like there is someone working twenty-four hours a day to take it all away from you.” This drive to always be better and to always hustle is something Cuban espouses.
Complacency has always been the enemy of the entrepreneur success stories we’ve encountered. Cuban encourages constant learning to rise to the top of the industry. To be successful, Cuban says, “Learning, learning, learning, whether it’s teaching himself how to create blockchain smart contracts, or watching tutorials on neural networks and machine learning… it’s only a question of how hard I was willing to work to learn.”
4. Alvin Poh
From starting a business worth practically nothing to becoming Singapore’s number one hosting provider, Alvin Poh managed to achieve success through business scaling. At the age of 17, he co-founded his first company, Vodien Studios, a web design firm that would later become Vodien Internet Solutions. The tech company, which provided graphic design, web design, and web development services, would later become the largest hosting provider in all of Singapore.
How Poh grew his business:
While still attending Singapore Management University, Poh wasn’t academically inclined and constantly struggled. However, he found that his skills and strengths leaned onto the digital space during this time. A relative had approached him to set up a website for a meager amount, but it provided an avenue for Poh’s skills to focus on.
Along with another student, Poh co-founded Vodien and set out to establish the business. By learning the intricacies of entrepreneurship, Poh led the company to become Singapore’s top hosting provider, with 35,000 clients under its portfolio. Seventeen years after establishing the tech company, Vodien was acquired by Dreamscape Networks in 2017 for $30 Million. Poh now focuses on his philanthropy while sharing his entrepreneurial insight through the principles he developed. He shares his 5E Scale Engine with budding entrepreneurs to grow and scale businesses efficiently.
Major Challenges:
Poh encountered realistic challenges on his path to success. He wasn’t born rich and considered himself a broke student who only had enough money for bus rides and lunches. Early on, he even had a job selling knick-knacks door-to-door.
This experience allowed him to recognize client qualification, a vital concept for direct sales. His attempts to earn more pocket money while in university by accepting side jobs in the digital space would eventually lead him to the path of establishing his own company. Even while developing Vodien, Poh sacrificed plenty of personal, social, and leisure time for himself.
Instead, he focused his time on learning the business and entrepreneurship. This dedication would lead him to establish proven principles for business scaling that he implemented for his company.
Key Takeaway:
Alvin Poh’s path to success highlights work ethic and business sense. Understanding through learning helped Poh grow his company well enough to attract a significant international player. By figuring out the proper path and strategies to entrepreneurship, Poh created his fundamental concepts and effectively enacted them to succeed.
5. Matt Mullenweg
Image Credit: beingguru.com
Matt Mullenweg is co-founder of the most popular publishing platform on the internet, WordPress. The open-source blogging platform powers about forty-three percent of the websites on the internet. This led Mullenweg to establish Automattic, a company that provides tools and services for most of the sites powered by WordPress.
He started his career as a volunteer and a college dropout who simply loved to write and work on his blogs. To becoming CEO of a tech giant, whose influence is massive, Mullenweg’s is one of the entrepreneur success stories that revolve around innovation and belief. Now, eighteen years after establishing WordPress, Automattic is worth $7.5 Billion and is one of the biggest companies in the industry.
How Mullenweg grew his business:
Before becoming a CEO to one of the web’s most prominent platforms, Mullenweg was a typical fun-loving teenager from Houston, Texas. He studied jazz saxophone while attending High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and later at the University of Houston before dropping out in 2004.
Back then, he mainly volunteered as a coder for B2/cafelog development. Mullenweg loved to blog and held a soft spot for free expression of ideas on the internet. So when the opportunity appeared in the form of an absent lead developer, he jumped into work. This provided the knowledge and experience that helped him develop the free and open-source content management system, WordPress.
WordPress was initially released when he was just twenty years old and is now used by more than sixty million websites. In its early days, Mullenweg held “upgrade parties” at his apartment in San Fransisco. He would personally upgrade people’s WordPress installations and talk about blogging and open source concepts. As a blogger, he built web software primarily because he needed a place to store and share his photos. So when he established Automattic, he made sure that it was a company that supported bloggers worldwide.
Major Challenges:
What started as a pet project for Mullenweg to improve on an existing system would, later on, become one of the largest used platforms on the internet. Yet, since its launch, Mullenweg has also experienced plenty of hurdles before becoming the most utilized Content Management system.
From technical issues such as vulnerability and compatibility to security glitches, Mullenweg grew to mitigate these company concerns. He also encountered lawsuits, sanctions, and censorships, all of which he faced while staying committed to WordPress being a platform for freedom of speech. Mullenweg made sure that his company’s capabilities would always stay updated and remain true to his ideals of expression to meet these challenges.
Key Takeaway:
Matt Mullenweg’s entrepreneur success stories, founded on WordPress’s humble beginnings, are testaments to Mullenweg’s passion for sharing what he loves. As a blogger himself, he provided the tools needed to refine his craft. In so doing, he created a platform that everyone would use. WordPress isn’t something he just built. It’s who he considers himself to be.
He focused on projects he had an affinity for and described himself as someone who eats, breathes, and sleeps WordPress. According to Matt, “Focus on what actually matters to your chosen business day in and day out.” He pursued something relevant to his life, and because of this, he contributed to technological advancement and the capabilities of freedom of expression around the world.
6. Sara Blakely
Image Credit: Forbes.com
Inventor and entrepreneur Sara Blakely is the founder and creator of one of the most popular body-slimming women’s undergarments, Spanx. Among the most relatable entrepreneur success stories, hers is one gained from experience and innovation. In 1998, she was going door-to-door selling fax machines down in Florida.
She had been struggling to eliminate noticeable panty lines when she wore light-colored slacks, so she decided to try and find a solution herself. Her invention, which she called Spanx, would be a pioneering “shapewear” company that is now valued at $1.2 Billion, with Blakely herself having a net worth of $1 Billion.
How Blakely grew her business:
In trying to solve her convenience and fashion concerns, Blakely decided to take the initiative and find her own solution. She cut the feet off of pantyhose pairs and tried to wear them under her pants. Seeing that she had the right idea that would undoubtedly help so many women, she pursued the concept.
Working nights and weekends to develop the concept, she went to manufacturers and researched patents to develop her prototype. Spanx would later find its best advert in the form of a guest appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s show. Oprah remarked that she liked Spanx better than her usual underwear, with the testimony (and TV guesting) providing the much-needed commercial reinforcement for the brand.
The shapewear company based in Atlanta has expanded to over two hundred items. From slimming and toning garments, yoga clothes, jeans, and has even expanded into shirts for men. Her innovative business acumen propelled Spanx to commercial success, earning more than $400 Million in annual sales.
Major Challenges:
Like so many entrepreneur success stories, Blakely considers her failures to be her greatest learning moments. For example, it took her seven years of selling fax machines door-to-door before she came up with the innovative shapewear idea. Before that, she initially planned to become a trial lawyer but reconsidered when she scored low on her law school admission exam.
She even took on a job at Walt Disney World and occasionally as a stand-up comedian before becoming a fax machine salesperson. Yet, despite her frustrations, Blakely never let herself drown in misery. Instead, she kept finding out what her strengths were and trusted that she would grab the opportunity once it presented itself, and that’s precisely what she did.
Key Takeaway:
Blakely’s experience proves that there will always be opportunity in solving your own problems first. It was a simple convenience and fashion nuisance to Blakely that presented the opportunity to her creating Spanx and her now vast shapewear empire.
She wasn’t focused on creating a lot of money but had the insight and tenacity to see the opportunity she could capitalize on. By developing effective solutions, entrepreneurs just might have in their hands a problem-solver that can easily become a money-maker.
Conclusion
Life is filled with unknown opportunities and possibilities, and entrepreneurs keen on achieving greatness need to strive to spot these. No hardworking entrepreneur gets spoon-fed success. Remind yourself that success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get to the top. All of the individuals featured here had determination and perseverance innate in them. Let these entrepreneur success stories provide you with the inspiration you need to become one yourself.
1 thought on “Entrepreneur Success Stories that Will Inspire You”
Great read. I posted this on my Facebook and my audience enjoyed it!
Keep up the great work. 🙂
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