You’ve heard of overnight successes, companies like Pandora, brands like Fab, authors like J.K. Rowling, but what you often don’t hear about is the years it took them to become an overnight success. Pandora for example spent 11 years to get to where they are today and almost failed in the early years of their business.
Harry Potter is a runaway success, but the fist ten publishing houses that looked at it told J.K. Rowling to take a hike. Starting a business is a journey and overnight successes are often years in the making. It takes the willingness to learn from your customers and the ability to change your idea or “pivot” which has turned-into the most over-used buzzword in the startup space, but for good reason.
The Mailbox App has recently been touted as one of the most incredibly overnight successes of this year…but as usual, it wasn’t an overnight success, instead it was years of work on a productivity app called Orchestra that inspired the founders to build Mailbox. TechCrunch released a great interview with the co-founder of Mailbox, Gentry Underwood that I highly recommend you watch. Oh and next time you feel bad that your idea isn’t an overnight success, remember, you need to be ready for a marathon, quick sprints rarely win the race.
