How Many Times Should You Try Before Success? Tue, May 16, 2017

How many times should you try before rationally quitting? Intuitively, you would think there is a number that most people will attempt before the survival instincts kick in. What is that number? Apparently, it is much higher than one would think.

Many people believe that the startup world is seemingly full of instant successes but reality is, that is few and far between. As our CEO has said before, in order for a startup company to have long-term, sustainable success, you need to be in “marathon mode”, not “sprint mode”.  

Persistence will always make impossible things possible. Tenacity and determination always wins.

Here are some great examples: 

300 times the founder of Pandora.com approached investors before he got funding.

400 times Richard Branson launched companies before he finally founded one that is out of this world [Virgin Galactic] pun-intended.

1,009 times Colonel Sanders, who started KFC, was turned down when he tried selling his fried chicken recipe.

1,500 times Sylvester Stallone was rejected when he tried selling his script and himself as what would become the film “Rocky”.

5,126 times James Dyson created failed prototypes of his vacuum cleaner before succeeding.

10,000 times Thomas Edison created failed prototypes of his electric bulb before succeeding.