I’m often struck by the ability of a single individual to change the world.
Think Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Anne Wojcicki, Martin Luther King Jr. and Indira Gandhi, to name a few.
They each started with no money and no technology, just their passion and perseverance.
Ultimately, three things make anything possible: People, technology and money.
If you have the right people on your team and enough money, you can create the technology — that’s called innovation.
If you have the right people and the right technology, you can attract the funding — that’s called venture capital.
But money and technology alone, without the persistent and passionate human mind driving things forward, are useless.
If I had to name my superpower, it would be persistence — not giving up, even when everyone tells me it isn’t going to work.
My most important successes (companies like the XPRIZE Foundation, Singularity University, Planetary Resources and Zero-G) have taken me 10 years or more to implement.
Had I given up in the face of the criticism or adversity, you wouldn’t be reading this blog post.
What good is patience without persistence?
Doing anything big and bold in life is hard work, and learning to persist (try, fail, learn, try again, etc.) is fundamental to any entrepreneur’s success.
Another name for this superpower is ‘grit,’ the will to keep pushing, iterating, and taking the next step in the face of hardship.
Remember that true failure only comes when you give up.
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