Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Jim Merithrew/WIRED
In many ways, 2014 turned out to be the year of the smartphone. Headlined by the release of Samsung’s water-resistant, feature-filled Galaxy S5 and Apple’s new “phablet,” the iPhone 6 Plus, the past year produced a slate of big winners in the mobile industry. It also produced several huge flops.
Amazon’s Fire Phone, for example, was one of the big losers of 2014. After launching in July to paltry sales numbers, the Fire Phone quickly dropped its $200 price tag (subsidized by mobile carrier AT&T) in favor of a September price of only $.99. Unfortunately, poor sales numbers continued from there. In October, Amazon announced $437 million in Q3 losses and an $83 million inventory of unsold Fire Phones. A $170 million expense write off came next. Finally, Amazon launched a last-ditch sale just before December 2014, practically giving away unlocked Fire Phones for $199, a full $250 lower than their original price tag. In short, the phone was a huge flop.
But Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos – who personally oversaw the entire Fire Phone project – is not discouraged. Instead, he remains optimistic (to a fault, according to some,) pushing forward in the way that entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and today’s “it” entrepreneur, Elon Musk, have.
Call it a lesson in perseverance, but I recently took a look at what happens to successful entrepreneurs when they hit a bump in the road. Here are a few things that stuck out.
Jeff Bezos
“I’ve made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon.com. Literally.”
Bezos, the founder and long-time CEO of Amazon.com, has overseen huge successes in the past two decades including the Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Prime, Kindle, and current leading cloud provider Amazon Web Services. Considering that Amazon is going up against the titans of several industries like Walmart, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and Dell, Bezos’s success has been even more impressive. The road to those triumphs, however, has not been a smooth one.
Back in 2000, Bezos invested $60 million dollars into Kozmo.com — a shampoo delivery service. That company didn’t last very long. Then, in 2012, Bezos lost $175 million through the purchase of LivingSocial, the main competitor to daily deal giant Groupon. Bezos isn’t shy about these failures, continuing to believe that innovation in spite of failure is the path to success, and that it only takes one big success to make up for dozens of failures.
Bezos is currently worth nearly $30 billion.
Steve Jobs
“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…It’s very character-building.”
The founder and creative force of Apple needs no introduction. Nearly everyone has some experience with one of Steve Jobs’s groundbreaking products, a list that includes the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Apple line of computers. But like Bezos, Jobs has his own list of failures. For one, he was fired from the company he founded by the man he personally hired as CEO. After he was forced from Apple, he pushed forward with a new venture, NeXT computer, which failed to reach the commercial success he saw at Apple.
Eventually Jobs returned to Apple, and the rest is history. But not every Apple product he created was a commercial triumph. His list of products failures includes the Apple Lisa, Apple III, ROKR, Macintosh TV, and MobileMe. In the end, though, Jobs is most remembered for his innovative products, devotion to design, and sometimes abrasive personality.
Jobs was worth $8.3 billion at the time of his death.
Richard Branson
“If you’re hurt, lick your wounds and get up again. If you’ve given it your absolute best, it’s time to move forward.”
The man behind international brand Virgin, Richard Branson has launched upwards of 100 different companies in his lifetime. So it stands to reason that some of those ventures turned out to be less than successful. While Branson receives praise for successful commercial ventures like Virgin Airlines, a slew of far less successful Virgin companies have been largely easily forgotten.
In the early 1990s, Branson launched Virgin Cola in an attempt to infiltrate the soft drink market. After 10 years and with only a 0.5% market share, Virgin Cola finally closed shop. Virgin Cars was launched in 2000, but only sold 12,000 cars in three years.
Branson has also pushed the Virgin brand into makeup, wedding dresses, lingerie, and flowers. There was even a Virgin-powered social network, along with an attempt to rival iTunes with Virgin Pulse. All of these ventures met with little success. Branson has always looked at these failures as learning experiences, and continues to push forward, as evidenced by a recent investment in the race to create a worldwide ISP.
Branson’s current net worth is $4.9 billion.
Elon Musk
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
Successes with both Tesla Motors and SpaceX have gained huge notoriety for entrepreneur Elon Musk, but the two companies both had brushes with bankruptcy. In 2008, an unsettled Musk was faced with a huge decision. He would have to split his limited funds in an effort to keep both companies going, or concentrate all of his money on one venture, letting the other fail completely. The decision was incredibly difficult for Musk, as both companies were nearly bankrupt at the time. The choice became so challenging, in fact, that it nearly caused Musk to suffer a nervous breakdown.
In the end, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO made the decision to fund both projects. Not long afterwards, both companies received huge rounds of funding, keeping them afloat and fueling the major success stories we’re all now familiar with. And at the rate he’s going, Elon Musk has the chance to be one of the most influential innovators of the 21st Century.
Musk is now worth $11.7 billion.
Tayven James is a Utah-based husband, father, and tech fan who loves to discover and opine about what’s new in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment