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10 Amazing Entrepreneurs Who Had

Accomplished Nothing By Age 30
Proof that you don't have to be a prodigy to succeed. These highly successful
entrepreneurs had accomplished next to nothing before the age of 30.
BY SAM PARR
OCTOBER 27, 2015

Theres a rumor that Paul Graham, the founder of the worlds most successful
incubator, once invested in someone because he looked like Mark Zuckerberg. But
being young isnt a prerequisite for starting a successful company.
Dont believe me? Here are 10 entrepreneurs who had accomplished nothing by 30years-old.
Note: This post is all men, so make sure to check out Part 2 of this post for 10
wildly successful female entrepreneurs.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter 30-years-old

As much as hed like you to believe hes a sophisticated

entrepreneur, Jack Dorsey was a punk skater well into
his mid-20s.

Dorseys first company (started while he was at NYU) was a cab dispatching program.
When this fizzled out, Dorsey approached Ev Williams, who was running Odeo, a
podcast company. He pitched him the idea of an instant messaging service.
Williams loved the concept and teamed up with Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass to
pursue it full time. Dorsey was appointed CEO. He was 30-years-old at the time.

Tim Westergren, Pandora 35-years-old

Tim Westergren started Pandora when he was 35. But
he couldnt pay salaries for two years.

Before starting Pandora, Westergren was a failed musician, part-time composer, nanny
and hippy.
Although he started Pandora (his first entrepreneurial endeavor) at 35, Pandora didnt
become an online radio channel until Westergren was 37.
Pandora started as a hardware company that allowed stores to play music. Pandora
even went bankrupt in their first two years and Westergren somehow convinced 50
employees to work without pay for two years.
Heres the speech he gave employees each week that convinced them to stay. After
hearing this words, Id have stayed too.

Jan Koum, WhatsApp 33-years-old

Before creating WhatsApp, Jan Koum applied to work

at Facebook. They rejected him.

Koum incorporated WhatsApp on his 33rd birthday. Hes a San Jose State college
dropout.
After leaving school, he landed a gig at Yahoo where he met Brian Acton, his
cofounder. After nine years at Yahoo, Koum applied to work at Facebook and was
famously rejected, which I find pretty hilarious.

Jack Ma, Alibaba 35-years-old

Jack Mas never written a line of code, and the first
time he used a computer was in his 30s.

Now hes worth $22.5 billion, but until his 30s he thought himself a failure. In
a Charlie Rose interview, Ma revealed he failed his college entrance exam three times.
After that, he applied to over 30 different jobs, including KFC, and again, he was
rejected.
So, at the age of 31, Ma started his first internet company called China Yellow
Pages. The company made around $800,000 in the three years it was in business.
At 35, he founded Alibaba. Like Amazon, Alibaba didnt make any profit in its first
three years, but we know how the story ended.
Interestingly, Jack Ma has never written a line of code. Perhaps he should be a speaker
at Hustle Con?

Ben Horowitz, LoudCloud 33-years-old

After starting his first company at 33, Ben Horowitz
was often on the brink of bankruptcy.

After graduating from UCLA in 1988 and hopping from job to job for seven years, 29year-old Ben Horowitz joined Netscape as their first product manager.
After Netscape was acquired in 1999, Horowitz and Marc Andreessen (Netscapes
founder) teamed up to to start LoudCloud. Horowitz was 33-years-old.
In Horowitzs book, The Hard Things About Hard Things, he talks about the many
near death experiences that LoudCloud faced, such as being two weeks away from
defaulting on payroll. Thankfully for Horowitz, Loudcloud was acquired for $1.6
billion in cash when he was 41. Beautiful.

Sam Walton, WalMart 44-years-old

Before Sam Walton founded WalMart, he owned a
small discount store with his father-in-law.

In 1945, before starting WalMart, Sam Walton took out a $20,000 loan (about
$250,000 adjusted to today) from his father-in-law and purchased a franchised Ben
Franklin variety store. Three years later, Walton bought another Ben Franklin store,
220 miles away. But even though Walton was managing two stores, he still struggled
to pay his employees.
In 1945, when Walton was 44-years-old, and had years of business experience, he
opened the first WalMart.

Peter Thiel, PayPal 30-years-old

One of the worlds most successful tech investors
almost went to law school.

I never thought Id say this sentence, but Im thankful Peter Thiel followed Tucker
Maxs advice.
Before he was the founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel was just another lawyer who hated
his life. After graduating Stanford Law in 1992, Thiel landed a gig at a Manhattan law
firm, a place that, in his words, from the outside everyone wanted to get into, but,
on the inside everybody wanted to leave.
After seven months Thiel left, and joined Credit Suisse as a derivatives trader. Three
years later Thiel founded Paypal. He was 31-years-old. Four years later, eBay
acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion, making his stake in the company worth roughly $50
million.

Reed Hastings, Pure Software 30-years-old

Reed Hastings was in the Peace Corp in his 20s.

Most people dont realize this, but Reed Hastings was actually a successful
entrepreneur before he started Netflix. In 1991, when he was 31-years-old, Hastings
started Pure Software, a debugging tool for software engineers. Hastings, a trained
engineer, helped the company double their revenue each year. In 1997, when Hastings
was 37, Rational Software acquired Pure Software for $750 million, giving Hastings
the means to start Netflix.
In between college and starting Pure Software, Hasting was in the Peace Corps. He
taught English in Swaziland. Whatta guy.

Henry Ford, Ford Motor Company 40-years-old

Before starting Ford at the age of 40, Henry Fords
perfectionism led to failure as he missed deadlines on
making his prototypes.

Although he created one of the biggest self-made fortunes in mankind history ($199
billion), Henry Ford bankrupted his first two companies before starting Ford. Ford,
like Steve Jobs, was a perfectionist who cared deeply about every minor detail of his
automobiles. Because of that he continually missed deadlines and failed to complete
his first prototypes.
After years of failure, Fords investors convinced him to hire James Couzen. Couzen
convinced Ford to sell an imperfect car and to have mechanics throughout the
country that were trained to fix broken automobiles.

Mark Cuban, MicroSolutions 32-years-old

28-year-old Mark Cuban shared a three-bedroom

apartment with five people. His bedroom was in the
closet.

At 24, Cuban graduated from Indiana University and moved to Dallas to work as a
bartender. His first gig out of school was selling computers for $18,000 a year. But he
was fired for disobeying his boss. At 25-years-old he started MicroSolutions, a
software consultancy company. After seven years, Cuban sold MicroSolutions, netting
him $6 million enough to start Broadcast.com, which he sold for $5.7 billion.

Know anyone who could use encouragement to create something big? Share this
article with them!
Want more? Make sure to check out Part 2 to see 10 more successful founders who
had accomplished next to nothing by age 30.
And as always, enter your email below to get posts like this straight to your inbox
each week.

A note from The Hustle: On Nov. 4th we're bringing content and media experts to
San Francisco to teach the strategies they use to create world-class content. You
should come.

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