Five Giants Who Took a Massive Turnaround from Failure

Abhishek Shah
ThugStart
Published in
4 min readApr 25, 2016

Starting a business and working to make it a success is a path strewn with lots of struggles and hardships. And sometimes, in spite of all the efforts you may still have to face failure. However, truly spectacular souls with their never say die attitude keep finding new ways to make their idea work and don’t rest till they succeed.

A number of corporate giants have seen low phases and have bounced back with their sheer willpower and perseverance. Truly inspiring is the story of these renowned business houses, which turned around their failures and today, are a name to reckon with in their respective fields.

Apple

Apple, which is a well known name in the field of innovative technology, has had its share of tough times. After its conceptualization, Apple went on to wow the world with its unique idea which actually changed the way people viewed technology. However, after the ouster of Steve Jobs, the founder and technical wizard of the company, the organization started to experience a downfall. This went on for 12 years, which cost Apple Inc a major section of its market share and a setback in its technological innovations.

Later, after Jobs was rehired by the company, new customer centric strategies and an iMac were developed, which turned things for the company. A conscious rebranding was also carried out which gave the company a new face. Today, Apple is considered to be one of the most innovative and successful corporate giants in the global level.

FedEx

fedex

Can you picture a world minus FedEx? Considered to be a pioneer of sorts in the logistics arena when it was launched in 1971, the growing rates of fuel and various problems that haunt the logistics arena proved to be nightmare for the company. It started losing money faster than it could think of until its finances dwindled to as low as $5000.

However, the company soon bounced back with some new strategies that were in sync with changing times and some beneficial repositioning. Today, in spite of so many logistic companies having made their foray into this field, FedEx continues to be the ruler.

Evernote

evernote

A leader when it comes to make it easy for people to jot down notes and organize their work, Evernote was not always as successful as it is today. In fact, there was a time when its founder and owner, Phil Libin was contemplating to pull down the shutters just because he felt that his idea might never succeed. However, help arrived from an overseas investor in form of $500,000 and gave the business a new leash of life.

Airbnb

airbnb

Airbnb has proved to be an inspiration for all the startup owners who find it hard to get their projects financed. Founded in 2008, Airbnb did not have any takers initially. The most prestigious investors in Silicon Valley gave it a miss, leaving the team in a lurch. However, the team members found some quick fix ways to keep the airline going and soon gained momentum. This was all they needed to attract investors. Today, Airbnb is a multi billion dollar company.

Reddit

reddit

With the internet fever catching up fast, the Reddit team decided to launch an online portal. But, when there were no visitors coming to the portal, the founders came up with an idea to make it work. They created a number of fake accounts and initiated discussions among themselves. This activity soon got other users interested in the site and the bet paid off.

Today, Reddit is considered to be one of the most popular internet portals and boasts of about 169 million visitors every month.

What you learn from these corporate giants is that getting demoralized at the first sign of failure will never get you anywhere. In order to stay afloat you need to keep putting in more efforts and think of better ways to enhance your revenues.

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Abhishek Shah
ThugStart

Nomad | Early Stage Investor | Wannabe Anthropologist | Technology Evangelist | Curious, Inquisitive & Experimental Entrepreneur