Three stories about the struggles of successful people

The road of life will not be smooth sailing, and the journey of career is full of ups and downs. Only struggle, only struggle, can we reach the other side of success. The following is the story about the struggle of successful people that I compiled for you. I hope you like it!

Struggle Story of Successful People 1: Peter Thiel

He is a mathematical genius and a chess player, and he likes the works of Solzhenitsyn and Rand. In the global internet community, venture capitalist Peter? Thiel is a name that can't be bypassed. Because people in the industry are always looking forward to hearing what new projects this "prophet" figure is interested in, and also because of his successful entrepreneurial and investment experience and his ability to turn stone into gold.

PayPal goes public, and the first bucket of gold in life

University Avenue, located in the most lively area of Palo Alto, is the outpost port for the release of technology products in Silicon Valley. There is a room called Caf on this street? Cafe in Venetia. Peter? Most of Thiel's industries are set up in Caf? Near Venetia Looking around, the guests in this cafe are all people who use Apple devices and are not very well dressed but full of energy. Their discussion topics are inseparable from their own creative ideas and venture capital. In the summer of 1998, 23-year-old Ukrainian programmer Max? Max Levchin listened to Thiel's speech on currency trading at Stanford University. The next day, they met in Palo Alto, hoping to build an electronic payment system to make e-commerce transactions simple, unified and secure, which is the prototype of PayPal in the future. In 22, Thiel was in this cafe with his friend Allen? Elon Musk met to discuss whether or not to let PayPal go public and reached an agreement. Finally, this electronic payment company, founded in 1998, successfully went public with a market value of about 1.2 billion US dollars, becoming the first large-scale IPO after the "911" incident. Subsequently, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion, and Thiel also got the first bucket of gold in his life? 55 million dollars.

venture capital, turning the stone into gold

Thiel, who is financially free, devoted himself to venture capital. He renamed Thiel Capital Management, which he founded in 1996, Clarium Capital Management, and injected $1 million himself. Since then, Thiel has been patiently looking for promising startups. At that time, social networking, a field that few people liked, was thought to be the next dangerous internet bubble, but Thiel was still full of confidence. In the summer of 24, Hoffman and Silicon Valley urchin Sean? Sean Parker introduced Thiel to Zuckerberg, who was looking for a major investor for Facebook. Thiel provided $5, start-up capital for Facebook, which was valued at less than $5 million at that time. This was the first external investment that Facebook received. This investment won him 7% of Facebook shares and became a member of the company's board of directors. Although Thiel sold nearly half of his shares in the following years, and the remaining shares were further diluted by Facebook's multiple rounds of financing, Thiel still held about 3% of the shares. If calculated by the market value of $1 billion after Facebook's listing, Thiel's stock value is expected to reach $3 billion, and the return on investment is more than 6, times. What about Mark? Zuckerberg created Facebook, a miracle that changed human life style, so Peter? Peter Thiel, born in 1964, is the driving force behind this miracle. The American internet community once again remembered Thiel's name.

a year later, he founded the Founders Fund for $5 million, and after the fund was established, he invested in a series of highly innovative startups, including YouTube, Slide, a photo sharing software company, Yelp, Palantir Technologie, which developed software for searching terrorists and financial fraud, SpaceX, an electric car company, and Kiva, a micro-lending company. These companies turned out to be very successful. It can be said that Thiel is the most successful technology venture capitalist in the world.

how to select promising entrepreneurs? Thiel said that he would ask the most important question to every entrepreneur seeking investment, that is, "Why did the 2th employee join your company?" Thiel believes: "It is easy to explain why some people want to be CEOs or join startups as early employees, because they want to run a company or get rich by joining early startups. It is also easy to know why the 1,th employee is willing to join, because it is obvious that the company is on the road to growth, and joining can earn a stable income. But the 2th employee will have many different meanings. Because most of your company's equity has been allocated when the 19th employee of the company joined, but the company has not succeeded, so your company is not a place worth joining in order to stabilize income. " "I will only vote for a company that answers this question, that is, the 2th employee will join in because the company is doing something brand-new and different."

Contradictory complex, "Born to win"

Thiel was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1967. His father was a chemical engineer, and his father Klaus moved to several large engineering companies many times, always running around with his family, and finally settled in Foster, 2 miles south of San Francisco, USA. Thiel went to primary school in seven different places. Finally, in the fifth grade, he settled down in Foster, San Francisco Bay. Gentel's early growing environment was full of self-confidence, intelligence and loneliness. He is a mathematical genius and a chess master, and his chess set is affixed with the motto of life "Born to win". When he was a teenager, his favorite reading was "The Lord of the Rings", which he always read repeatedly. At the same time, he also likes the works of Solzhenitsyn and Rand. Thiel grew up in a _ _ _ _ family, and believed in Christ himself _ _ _ _ in high school. He began to believe in libertarianism and even became an extreme believer of libertarianism. He described his faith as "somewhat heretical" and said, "I believe in Christ. But I don't try to persuade others to keep the same faith as me. " At the same time, as a Christian, Thiel is also an out-and-out homosexual, which is one of the concrete manifestations of Thiel being called a contradiction complex by the outside world. In this regard, he said, "In my mind, identity exists in various subtle forms. I think that homosexuals, blacks and women all have profound and different experiences about this. I also believe that everyone has an exaggerated trend and raised it to the ideological field. " Obviously, Thiel is a typical contradiction complex. He lives or does business in his utopia and enjoys it.

The information age has brought Thiel great wealth, but he is still disappointed. He believes that the internet technology revolution has not created enough jobs, nor has it improved the manufacturing level and social productivity. Innovation in virtual worlds cannot replace technological progress in the real world. Thiel rarely updates his Facebook page. He is also "not used to using things like BlackBerry, iPhone or email." It was not until a year ago that he started texting.

I firmly believe that innovation can save the world

Now, Thiel, who has made a lot of money in social media, has a new goal? To provide funds for those "ideas that can save the world", in his words, at least "raise our civilization to a higher level". Thiel believes that almost all the problems in the world, such as the defects in government institutions and education systems, the lingering financial turmoil, the market bubble, the energy crisis and the war for resources, all stem from the stagnation of scientific and technological innovation, and the only way to save them can only be a drastic scientific breakthrough. At present, Thiel has invested a lot of money in companies that focus on prolonging life, migrating to offshore platforms, commercializing space, friendly artificial intelligence, modifying DNA sequences to accelerate evolution and other crazy ideas. Recently, his Thiel Foundation has invested in another eye-catching project? Fresh meat 3D printing technology startup.

This company, called Modern Meadow, which is engaged in the research of 3D printing technology for fresh meat, is located in Missouri, USA. It is said that it has received a 6-figure investment from the Tell Foundation. According to the company, through special treatment and cultivation of different types of special structural layers, the test-tube meat can become edible, and it can also provide the human body with the required protein. The company said that it was engaged in this research to reduce the environmental impact brought by large-scale farming. At present, the meat produced is 2 cm long, 1 cm wide and half a millimeter thick. "We look forward to attracting a group of early consumers who like cooking and vegetarians for ethical reasons. Then, with the gradual reduction of prices, more religious vegetarians (such as Hindus, Jews and Muslims) are recognized, and finally hope to provide safe and secure pork products for the general public. "

At present, Thiel ranks 365th on Forbes list with a net worth of $1.5 billion. Thiel's contribution to the internet world is not only as a venture capitalist, but also his unique thinking ability. In any case, Thiel's dreams are all about changing the world.

The Struggle Story of Successful People 2: Christopher? Levi

In those days, Christopher? Li Wei became famous in the international film world because of his successful performance in the blockbuster Superman. However, just as he was in Hollywood, his acting career was abruptly stopped by an accident. In May 1995, in a fierce equestrian competition, he accidentally fell headlong and became a paraplegic who could only sit in a wheelchair forever. When he woke up from a coma, the first thing he said to his family was: "Let me get rid of it as soon as possible!"

After he was discharged from the hospital, his family pushed him out in a wheelchair in order to distract him.

On one occasion, the car walked through the winding Panshan Highway in the Rocky Mountains. He quietly looked out of the window and found that the mountain road was winding and winding. The words "Turn ahead" hit his eyes again and again, and gradually awakened his heart: it turned out that it was not the end of the road, but the turn. He suddenly realized and shouted at his wife, "I want to go back, I still have a way to go!" "

From then on, he used a wheelchair as a director.

The film he directed for the first time won the Golden Globe Award; He also began to write hard with his teeth biting his pen. As soon as his first book, Still Me, came out, it entered the bestseller list and won the literary prize. At the same time, he founded an educational resource center for paralyzed patients and was elected as the chairman of the General Paralysis Association. He also ran around, held lectures and raised money for the welfare of the disabled, and became a famous social activist.

Recently, Time Magazine of the United States reported his deeds with the title "Ten Years, He is still Superman". In this article, he reviewed his mental journey and said, "When misfortune comes, it's not that the road has come to an end, but that it's time for you to turn."

Story of the Struggle of Successful People 3: Chen cursor

Poor boy started his business from scratch

Chen cursor, 45, was born in Tianganghu Township, Sihong County, Jiangsu Province. The parents who made a living by farming gave birth to five children. When Chen cursor was 2 years old, a brother and a sister starved to death because their families were extremely poor.

when Chen cursor was 13 years old, he rode his bicycle for more than ten miles every day to sell popsicles. Later, Chen cursor started selling grain again, earning five or six yuan a day at first, and then earning more than 3 yuan a day. At the end of the summer vacation at the age of 17, Chen cursor earned 2, yuan and became the first "juvenile ten thousand yuan household" in the township.

Chen cursor didn't neglect his studies. He used his spare time or holidays to do business. In 1985, Chen cursor was admitted to Nanjing College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. After graduation, he chose to continue his business.

He thinks that the ear acupoint disease detector, which has been on the market for a short time, has a good market prospect, but it is not intuitive. Patients can't see the detection results intuitively, so they pay experts to provide guidance, make a simple improvement on the ear acupoint disease detector, install the display shell, and input physiological images, so that patients can intuitively see which part of their body has diseases on the display as long as they hold the two electrodes of the instrument. This new instrument, named "Cross-century Home CT" by Chen cursor, won a national patent and was widely praised as soon as it went on the market. The wholesale price of such an instrument with a cost of less than 5 yuan was about 5 yuan. Chen cursor opened Jiangsu and Anhui markets successively, and sold more than 5, products in half a year.

In 1996, 28-year-old Chen Guangbiao founded Nanjing Jinweili Electronic Medical Equipment Co., Ltd., and sold electronic disease detectors to more than 2 provinces and regions in China. By 2, he had earned tens of millions of yuan.

This year, Chen cursor visited Tai 'an, Shandong Province. At that time, Tai 'an was rich in Ganoderma lucidum, and the price was lower, one kilogram in 2 yuan. Chen cursor found that there were great business opportunities. "Ganoderma lucidum is good, but it is inconvenient to eat. If it can be ground into powder, it will be much more convenient to make capsules." With this exciting idea, he knocked on the door of experts from Nanjing University and major hospitals in the province, invited experts from Nanjing University to do advertising planning, and then invited hospitals to make clinical reports. After obtaining the production license, he raised money to order the production line in Shanghai, and then went to Tai 'an, Shandong Province to buy a large number of Ganoderma lucidum powder, and then came back for deep processing and technical treatment to make Ganoderma lucidum capsules. In this way, a kilogram of Ganoderma lucidum purchased by 2 yuan was made into capsules, and the price reached 2, yuan a kilogram, which made Chen cursor gain a lot.

By 21, Chen cursor had made a net profit of 1. 2 million yuan. "I became a billionaire by starting a business from scratch at the age of 32, which can be regarded as an example for young people to start a business." Chen cursor said.

to Chen cursor's delight, the "Ganoderma lucidum capsule" project has promoted the "Ganoderma lucidum economy" in Tai 'an, Shandong Province, and brought wealth to one side of the people.

Excavating "treasures" from construction waste

In early 22, Chen cursor became interested in the field of circular economy through the introduction of friends.

"According to the regulations of relevant departments, in the transformation of old urban areas, for every old house with a building area of 1 square meter demolished, the developer has to subsidize the demolition company for several tens of yuan. But in fact, most demolition companies are willing to work for nothing as long as they can get a job, even if the developers don't give money.