The biggest failures of the richest

We all know that the richest people on our planet have made their billions by setting up their own companies, inventing, and investing. Their results are always shown and praised on tv and social media. People often focus on what they have achieved rather than what they have lost to achieve. Let's take a closer look at the lives of the top 10 richest people in the world, to see what went on behind the scenes when they failed miserably.

1.Elon Musk

Elon Musk became the richest person in the world on the 7th of January in 2021, as his net worth crossed $185 billion. While we cannot even imagine how one person can have such a tremendous amount of money, Musk himself knows how many times he failed to earn it.

In 2008, only 13 years ago, his electric-car company Tesla failed before it even started to bring any profits. It was due to the high cost and the long time it took to produce electric cars. The company was not able to meet any deadlines and ruined its reputation. Everybody refused to invest any money and banks did not give any loans to keep the company going, therefore Elon Musk himself spent all of his fortunes till the last penny, and went bankrupt.

Now, Tesla is one of the most successful producers of electric cars.

2.Jeff Bezos

Only a day ago he was the richest person in the world, he had been in this position for more than three years earning his money from his company Amazon. Bezos is often displayed as a person who made more mistakes than any other person makes during their lifetime.

After Jeff Bezos started selling books, music, and movies from his garage, he spent $120mln on toys to expand Amazon's market to make it everything store. He was left with toys that cost more than $50mln. It is just one of the many million-dollar failures he had faced.

Amazon dominates e-commerce now and surely, will be dominant for many years in the future.

3.Bill Gates

The co-founder of Microsoft made mistakes that stop him from being a trillionaire by now.

He had tried and failed to build android and Google, using the opportunity, built it and earned billions out of it. Besides, he invested in Apple when the company was in hardship and underestimated its chances for success. Apple became more successful than Microsoft in just a few years.

Despite the facts above, he is the 3rd richest person in the world, and in fact, the most generous among them. he donates 99 percent of his wealth to charities.

4.Bernard Arnault

The CEO of LVMH admits the countless number of mistakes he had made over the years due to his impatient personality.

In the latest interview with Forbes, Bernard Arnault said that selling a makeup company that was not performing well was his biggest mistake, as later he bought many other companies which make billions of dollars now, but were not profitable before.

LVMH is the biggest luxury goods corporation in the world, bringing Arnault $114bln of total profit.

5.Mark Zuckerberg

Being the youngest self-made the 5th richest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg is the only person who became successful without failing a time. While many young entrepreneurs dream about having the same path as Zuckerberg, his mistakes were yet to come.

Because Facebook and Instagram are the biggest social networking apps, Mark Zuckerberg often fails to prevent the widespread of wrong data, and he is always blamed and responsible for the psychological trauma social media bringing to people.

With great power comes great responsibility.

6.Zhong Shanshan

The only Asian billionaire on our list, Zhong Shanshan is the richest person in China and the 6th richest in the world with a $93 billion net worth.

His hardships started in his early life when his parents were persecuted by the government and he had to leave school at the age of 12. He was not able to receive formal higher education as well, did farming and sold mushrooms instead.

Shanshan founded a pharmaceutical company using the lessons he learned from life, which now became the most successful company in its field.

7.Warren Buffet

Known as the most successful investor alive on the planet, Warren Buffet became the 7th richest person in the world. He has a net worth of over $87bln and same as Bill Gates, he gives away 99 percent of his fortune to the ones in need.

Buffet himself admits that even the greatest investor fails before becoming successful, pointing out the $3.5bln money he lost after investing it ti the Dexter shoe company.

8.Larry Page and Sergey Brin

American Computer Scientists Lawrence Edward Page and Sergey Brin are the founders of Google and have a net worth of $82bln and $79bln respectively.

Larry is known for being unprofessional CEO and stepped down from the position after the biggest mistake he has made firing all of his managers saying that non-engineers could not manage engineers. The new structure failed and Page lost his good reputation among his employees. He worked hard for 10 years to become CEO again.

Now, Larry Page has the biggest share in the Google stock.

Sergey Brin, on the other hand, tried to use fax to order pizza, it was an immediate failure, but it brought him to founding Google with his friend Page.

9.Larry Ellison

Being the person who almost bankrupted his own company, Oracle, in its early days by releasing wrong earning statements, Ellison describes his failure as an incredible business mistake.

It took him 7 years to get Oracle out of the bankruptcy it had reached, but he came back stronger with a much better team. Oracle Corporation has been one of the tech giants of the USA for many years.

10.Walt Disney

Last person on this list may not be on of the top 10 richest people, but there is not any house he has not brought happiness. The co-founder of Walt Disney Production has success which cannot even be measured with money. Yet, he had to overcome many hardships to achieve his dreams.

He was told that he had no creativity and he had failed to run a production company. There was a period of time when he even ate food of dogs and lived on the streets because he couldn’t pay his rent. The characters he created were taken away from him a couple of times, making him even more failure.

His cartoons won 36 Oscars, he is the only person who could win so many Academy Awards.

We should always keep in mind that success is a collection of failures and only those who can fail miserably and start over and over again, will achieve their wildest dreams.