Stories
Oprah Winfrey
Did you hear about the young black woman who got fired from Baltimore’s WJZ? She was the co-host of the evening news. Seems she just didn’t “fit in.”
Perry Chen
An artist's passion for music leads him to create a platform where budding artists can propose their project ideas to the world so they can find resources and support to kickstart their project
James Dyson
He created 5,271 prototypes, failing over and over again in his search for perfection before reaching his desired goal: The Dual Cyclone.
Ron Shaich
Shaich’s biggest challenge was perhaps navigating and rejecting the conventional Wall Street wisdom of focusing on immediate profit.
Rovio
Rovio’s story reminds aspiring entrepreneurs that the romantic idea of overnight success umbrellas over years of failure, tweaking and dedication.
Michael Dell
At 12, Dell was already harnessing his entrepreneurial spirit by washing dishes at a restaurant to save money for his stamp collection. He would later go on to revolutionize personal computing at just 19 years old.
Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph
Neither knew if the company would work, but they believed it had potential and dedicated themselves to bringing a completely new way to get movies into customers’ houses.
Phil Knight
From the backs of cars to retailer stores, from the West Coast to the East Coast to the rest of the world, Nike spread like wildfire, becoming a global symbol for anything sports related.
Charles Schwab
The early 1970s were not particularly profitable years for Schwab. He had two more ventures fail. But 1975 resulted in a policy shift that forever altered the investment world.
Frank Winfield Woolworth
He did not initially seem competent - the manager refused to allow him to attempt some tasks claiming he lacked the common sense for it.
John Foley
How do you make working out and exercising a viable and exciting option? Turn it into a group exercise that everyone can have in their homes --without the group.
Apoorva Mehta
Apoorva Mehta developed his multi-billion-dollar company while living on a friend’s couch in the heart of San Francisco. Here's how he did it.
Richard Branson
Dropping out of school in 1967 at the age of 16, Branson made his first foray into the business world through launching an interschool publication called Student Magazine, which was to be the voice of a generation.
Herb Kelleher
Herb Kelleher epitomizes the charismatic, efficient and affable CEO. He revolutionized the airline industry and created one of the most admired companies in the United States: Southwest Airlines.
Sidney Garfield and Henry J. Kaiser
These two men recognized a fundamental human need and took direct action to completely revolutionize the healthcare industry for decades to come.
Walt Disney
In 1919 Disney worked for the Kansas City Star only to get fired. The reasoning? He “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”
Pierre Omidyar
Omidyar become increasingly cognizant of the human quality embedded in his site – people wanted to connect through shared interests and had an affinity for products with stories. He tapped into this sentiment.
Colonel Sanders
Going from restaurant to restaurant, door to door, he’d cook his fried chicken on the spot for owners, if they liked it, they would sell it. He was initially hit with 1009 rejections.
Henry Ford
He completely reorganized daily life with the introduction of automobiles and changed manufacturing itself with the introduction of the first moving assembly line. The impact he had on American life transcends Ford Motor Company.
Kevin Systrom
In 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion, giving birth to the now hackneyed joke, “Facebook paid a billion dollars for Instagram, didn’t they know you could download it for free?”
