FX.co ★ 5 encouraging success stories

YouTube

Nowadays, YouTube is the most popular video hosting platform and the second most visited website in the world. However, the business did not hit the jackpot immediately. The platform was founded in 2005. YouTube’s initial concept was a dating social media app that was launched on Valentine’s Day. The huge efforts to promote the website were to no avail. However, one random post became the turning point. During routine maintenance, the developers posted a video with elephants. This prompted users to share their amateur videos. As a result, the founders reviewed their business idea which has immensely expanded their target audience. Thus, YouTube has evolved into a video sharing and social media platform with millions of viewers.

Dyson

English inventor James Dyson owned a factory producing industrial trolleys in the 1980-s. Wondering how to solve the problem of cleaning space at a sawmill, he asked engineers to design a device to pick up sawdust. They created a powerful device, so a new idea popped into Dyson’s head. He decided to apply the same cyclone technology to a vacuum cleaner. The first model was manufactured in 1986. He allocated the sales revenue to found his own production company with a research division. The famous hoover DC01 is the most popular invention of the think tank. This bestselling model made the company the leader both in the domestic and global markets. Interestingly, before this model was launched into production, Dyson had designed more than 5,000 prototypes for 5 years.

Apple

At present, Apple Inc. is recognized as the most valuable company in the world. It seems that success has always accompanied the iPhone maker. In fact, before Steve Jobs’ brainchild turned into a high-tech giant, the company had a long losing streak. For example, the first failure occurred in 1984 when Apple had just launched its first mass-market PC, Macintosh 128K. The debut was overshadowed by the lack of vents and some faults in software. So, initially robust sales began to dwindle dramatically. A year later, Lisa and Apple 3 projects ended up with another failure. Steve Jobs was fired from the company. His comeback in 1997 set the stage for Apple’s leadership in the IT industry.

Instagram

The well-known photo and video sharing network also followed a rough path to success. Its predecessor, the Burnb app, also had the features of photo-sharing, geographical tagging, and a variety of other features. However, users found the app too complicated and Burnb faded into oblivion. Instead, Kevin Systrom who spotted people’s interest in photo-sharing introduced Instagram in 2010, the simplified version of the previous app. By that time, several similar services also had popped up, but Instagram outpaced them because celebrities preferred this particular social network.

Angry Birds

Three programmers at the Finnish company Rovio Entertainment developed the popular video game Angry Birds. Before they designed this action-based media franchise, the team had won the contest arranged by Nokia for the best mobile game. However, after this success the team had to face a protracted tough challenge. They developed almost 50 games but none of them gained popularity. Once, a fellow designer showed the programmers his pictures of round-shaped birds that gave them the idea for a new game. Angry Birds saved the company from bankruptcy. Besides, the game has been recognized as the best in terms of popularity and revenue.