In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg was attending Harvard University.
It was here that he heard of the website HarvardConnect, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, that inspired him to create Facebook.
Zuckerberg could have easily approached the Winklevosses, given them credit for their idea, and asked to build Facebook together with them.
They surely would have accepted, and it would have resulted in less work for Zuckerberg in creating the site.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he struck out and founded Facebook himself, knowing full well that it might cause problems with the Winklevosses.
If he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t be the figure he is today, with a net worth of greater than $60 billion.
In 1994, Jeff Bezos was working at a Wall Street-based investment firm.
At the time, Bezos held the position of Senior Vice President. The pay was, by all definitions, exceptional. He could have held this job for years and lived a happy, financially-sound life.
But he didn’t.
In 1994, Jeff Bezos quit his job, a job that most people would kill to have. He threw away his financial security on a whim.
Then he drove to Seattle, where he started building what he described as an “online bookstore with millions of titles”.
Amazon officially launched in July of 1995.
Today, Jeff Bezos is the richest man alive, worth almost $130 billion.
If he hadn’t quit his job, he would probably still be just another man on someone else’s payroll.
Currently, Elon Musk heads two main companies: Tesla and SpaceX.
Both of these companies are in areas that almost no companies before them had ventured into.
Tesla was really the first company to make fully electric cars that didn’t have to sacrifice any functionality.
SpaceX was one of the first privately owned space exploration companies, and certainly the most ambitious, with its mind set firmly on reaching Mars.
Elon Musk put millions of dollars of his own money into both companies, not knowing whether investors would ever choose to fund the startups.
But they did.
Now, Musk is worth $20 billion, and Tesla and SpaceX are two of the most successful and well-known companies on the planet.
So, what does all of this show?
Successful people take risks.
They don’t play it safe.
They don’t try to hold on to everything in fear of losing it.
They take everything they have and they put it on the line.
They know that they could lose everything. That they could fail miserably.
But they do it anyway.
And that is exactly why they are successful.
You can’t make it by playing it safe.
Before you have it all, you have to risk it all.
#impascalokeke
