Throughout my years as a journalist, failure is probably the nigh frequent subject I've talked about with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and tech industry CEOs. Information technology'due south a subject near all of them accept admitted to beingness personally familiar with. In fact, virtually of the VCs and CEOs I've spoken with say they would be loath to invest in someone, either through funding or offering them a task, if that person hasn't personally experienced failure before.

Failure is primal to our growth. If we can acquire from what went wrong and why we know what to avoid or alter in the hereafter to avoid a repeat. Or equally Beak Gates once put information technology: "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose."

Of form failure is no fun when you are living through it, and it'due south often months or years before nosotros can expect back at it and recognize it for the keen teacher it is. To find examples of this look no further than the four examples below of famous "failures" who would not take accomplished massive success had they given upward.

Colonel Sanders

[Photograph: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by John Margolies, [LC-DIG-mrg-07361]]

Colonel Harland David Sanders is 1 of my favorite stories of a person who turned a string of failures into success. It'south because his success–franchising his "Kentucky Fried Chicken" hush-hush recipe, which made him a millionaire–didn't happen until he was 62, showing massive success isn't limited to the young and can occur any fourth dimension in your life.

Earlier Sanders found success with his recipe, he had multiple other failed careers, including equally a lawyer and every bit a salesman selling various wares including lamps, insurance, and tires. Just what'due south well-nigh incredible virtually Sanders'due south story is that he reportedly failed over one,000 times to sell his craven recipe. Information technology wasn't until his ane,010th time in trying to sell the recipe that he got someone to bite–and the rest is history. Had Sanders decided to give up after hearing his 10th, 100th, or even 1,000th "no" the fast food industry would exist a very dissimilar landscape today.

Related: This Is The Real Reason Leaders Fail In A Crisis

Rovio

Rovio is i of the biggest gaming success stories of all-fourth dimension. Its Aroused Birds franchise has been a staple of mobile gaming since its release in Dec 2009–and past 2012 the franchise has hit over i billion downloads. Further, Angry Birds fabricated the successful transition from video games to merchandising, television shows, and even a full-length feature film with the sequel due out side by side yr. Given this, y'all'd remember Rovio merely had success congenital into its Deoxyribonucleic acid.

[Photograph: courtesy of Rovio]

But that couldn't be further from the truth. Matter of fact, from its founding (every bit Relude Oy) in 2003 until the launch of Angry Birds in 2009, Rovio pretty much only knew failure. The company had developed and released 51 previous games–all of which failed to become hits. Equally Pekka Rantala, the former CEO of Rovio, told me in 2015:

"When Rovio [and so called Relude] was established in 2003, it was simply a normal, very small startup, making mobile games. It was hard for them during the get-go half dozen years. They managed to bring to market more than 50 different games, only none of them were particularly successful. They were really tight on resource and money; by 2009, they were really close to going bankrupt. And so came this 52nd game in December 2009, and that really changed everything, every bit the saying goes."

Because the developers at Rovio didn't requite up even afterwards their 50th failure, the company now boasts almost 400 employees and had about $300 million in revenue in 2017.

Related: Why Are Nosotros So Obsessed With Failure?

Steve Jobs and Apple

No list of famous failures would exist complete without both Steve Jobs and Apple. Only Jobs's and Apple tree's failure is a bit unlike than others on this list every bit the man and the visitor had massive success in their early on years before failing hard. Jobs was famously forced out of Apple–the company he founded–in 1985. It's difficult not to see yourself as a failure afterwards that. After Jobs'due south departure, the visitor itself entered a downward spiral, going from the leader of the personal computer revolution in the 1970s to an also-ran past the 1990s.

Then in 1997, with Apple tree just months abroad from defalcation, Jobs returned to the company and by 2011 non only turned Apple into the biggest company on the planet, but fundamentally inverse the computing, music, and smartphone industries by giving us the iMac, iPod, and iPhone. Remember how dissimilar the tech world would be today had Jobs let his failure get the best of him. No wonder in 2005, Jobs said, "I didn't come across it then, only it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me."

Walt Disney

Possibly the well-nigh iconic entertainment company to have ever existed is the Walt Disney Company. The visitor's characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are dear the world over. But far from but peddling in cartoons, the House of Mouse has influenced our civilisation thanks to everything from its theme parks to feature films. Today, Disney has created or owns some of the most recognizable brands in popular culture, including Marvel Comics and Star Wars, and Pixar.

Walt Disney [Photograph: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, [LC-DIG-hec-36581]]

But the entertainment landscape could have been very different if Walt Disney would take succumbed to his prior failures. In his early on twenties, Disney was fired from a Missouri paper for "non being creative plenty." Then in 1921 Disney founded his commencement animation studio, Laugh-O-Gram Studio, in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri. Information technology went bankrupt within two years. It's only afterward this failure that Disney decided to move w to pursue his dreams in Hollywood. The rest, every bit they say, is history. Afterwards picking up the pieces from his past failures, Disney would establish the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, which would later become the Walt Disney Studio, in 1923. Over the class of his life, Disney would receive 59 nominations for the Academy Awards, winning 22 of them.

As Walt Disney said in 1957: "All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, take strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, simply a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for y'all."