7 interesting tech business examples to guide startup thoughts

7 Wildly Successful Tech Businesses Who Turned Failure Into Fortune Sometime back, through a tweet where she shared the rejection letter she had received from a publisher for Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling showed us how deep failure is, and how even the best have gone through failure before seeing the eye of success. Yes, a lot of companies and entrepreneurs have seen failure before and after success, which has kept them rooted. Another accomplished business venture, Virgin Atlantic’s owner Richard Branson has written a book that talks about all his failures, and how it kept him motivated.

Who hasn’t heard of a successful business failing at some point or the other? There are many ventures that go wrong, products that go awry, and services that are not in sync with the needs. But, these businesses don’t believe it is shameful or wrong to fail; instead they work towards success and get it back with pride and honor. What you need to believe here is that failure is common, and it is a must if you want to know and understand the value of success. There have been many tech businesses that have seen failure and have then risen to success. Here, we will talk about few successful tech businesses that have turned their failure into fortune, and reached great heights.

AirBnB AirBnB is an excellent example of how failure was turned into success. In 2008, it was for the first time AirBnB reached out for investment. They first connected with 7 prominent and successful Silicon Valley investors, and gave them a lifetime offer of $150,000. This was equivalent to purchasing 10% of AirBnB. At that point, this offer was rejected by each and every one of them. The co-founder of AirBnB Brian Chesky kept with him all the rejection emails. Much recently, like J.K. Rowling, he too published these rejection letters to public. The global financial crisis that proved to halt every business, proved to be a blessing in disguise for AirBnB. It was during this time that the business took off, as people wanted to save their bucks spent on hotels. Today, the business has made a fortune and is valued at $25.5 Bn.

Apple This is a story of success hit low and then an all-time high. Long back when the Mac PCs were introduced, they were completely sucked in by the tech-savvy of that time. They were popular PCs, and people literally loved them. But, no innovation combined with expensive desktops, created an opportunity for other players to win more customers. Apple lost a major chunk of their customers, which led to major losses for the company. The survival of the company was being questioned in 1996. It was Steve Jobs who brought life and innovation to the company, which brought in iPods, iPhones and iPads to the market, which revived Apple and today it is one of the most successful companies today.

Pinterest Pinterest was first released to the market in the year 2009 and was named Tote then. The main function of the app was to track price, note the location, and allow users to favorite their items.This function is same with Pinterest too, but the time when Pinterest first came out, mobile commerce had not really evolved. This is what led to the app’s failure.Purchasing the items online using this app was proving to be difficult, which brought in another gap, which caused people to move away from this app. Today, after the evolution of the mobile commerce, and enhanced functionality, this app is more popular with the users. It is now worth $5 Bn.

Pandora The founder of this famous online radio Tim Westergren had to wait for two years, face a bankruptcy and have his staff see no payments during this period before they made any profit. The popular radio came out at the same time as the dotcom crash, which is probably the reason why most of the investors turned down the offer extended by Pandora. Today, the company has flourished and has a total of 50 Mn users.

Tesla Tesla had just started shop in terms of production, when the global financial crisis hit the world.

There were delays and overruns in their supply and distribution channels, which forced them to shut their shop. The staff layoffs during this period were 24%, which was really huge for that time.

Elon Musk the founder had to put in his personal savings to keep the shop running. This has been paid off after five years, when the company reported a profitable quarter.

Fitbit This was the pioneer of wearable technology, but has not been able to much success until recently.

The company received an initial funding of $400k, but that was not sufficient for the ambitious plan they were ready to roll out, which is why they got delayed in establishing their presence. They launched a year later, and were embraced with open arms, and are today it is the most successful company in wearable.