Famous Founders Who Failed Before They Succeeded
Henry Ford, Milton Hershey, Colonel Sanders and James Dyson: the failures before the famous success.
Last updated November 6, 2026
Stories about failing before succeeding are everywhere, and many of them are exaggerated. The popular claim that Henry Ford went bankrupt five times, for example, is not supported by the record. But the real record is often more useful than the myth, because it shows what each founder kept from the failure and what they changed.
Here are the founders in our archive whose first attempts failed, and what came next. Each entry links to the full story, where the sources are listed.
1. Henry Ford: two failed car companies
2Companies before Ford Motor
Henry Ford’s Detroit Automobile Company, founded in 1899, built 20 vehicles that sold poorly and was dissolved in 1901. His second venture, the Henry Ford Company, lasted only months with him; after he walked out in 1902 it became Cadillac. His third, the Ford Motor Company, nearly ran out of cash in its first weeks in 1903, then took off. The popular claim that he went bankrupt five times is not supported by the record.
Read the full story: Henry Ford Failed Twice Before Ford Motor Company
2. Milton Hershey: two candy businesses closed
$1MCaramel company sale, 1900
Milton Hershey’s first candy business, in Philadelphia, closed in 1882 after six years. His second, in New York, closed in 1886. Back in Lancaster with a poor credit rating, he built the Lancaster Caramel Company on one large order from a British importer, sold it for $1 million in 1900 and put the money into milk chocolate.
Read the full story: Milton Hershey Failed Twice, Then Sold Caramel for $1 Million
3. Colonel Sanders: starting over at 65
$105Monthly Social Security check
When a new interstate took the traffic from Harland Sanders’s restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky, he sold it at a loss in 1956. At 65, with his savings and a $105 monthly Social Security check, he went on the road to sign up restaurants to sell his fried chicken. In 1964 he sold Kentucky Fried Chicken for $2 million.
Read the full story: Colonel Sanders at 65: A $105 Check, Then a $2 Million Sale
4. James Dyson: 5,126 prototypes that did not work
5,127Prototypes built
James Dyson built 5,127 prototypes of his bagless vacuum cleaner over about five years, going deep into debt. British manufacturers would not license it, partly because they made money selling replacement bags. A Japanese company sold it from 1986, and the royalties helped pay for his own machine, the DC01, launched in 1993.
5. Stewart Butterfield: two failed games
$27.7BWhat Salesforce paid for Slack
Stewart Butterfield set out to build an online game twice, and both games failed. The first left behind a photo-sharing tool that became Flickr, bought by Yahoo in 2005. The second, Glitch, closed in 2012, and the chat tool its team had built for itself became Slack. Salesforce bought Slack for $27.7 billion in 2021.
Read the full story: Stewart Butterfield's Two Failed Games Became Flickr and Slack
6. Sam Walton: lost his first store over a lease
$50,000Paid for his stock and fixtures
Sam Walton made his first store, a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas, the best performer in its six-state region. In 1950 the landlord refused to renew the lease, which had no renewal option, and bought Walton’s stock and fixtures for $50,000. Walton started again in Bentonville and opened the first Walmart in 1962.
Read the full story: Sam Walton Lost His First Store. Then He Built Walmart.
7. Joe Coulombe: a store chain losing to 7-Eleven
1967First Trader Joe’s
Joe Coulombe’s Pronto Markets were a smaller, weaker copy of 7-Eleven, and he could see they would lose. Instead of fighting on the same ground, he opened a different kind of shop in Pasadena in 1967, aimed at well-educated shoppers without much money. He called it Trader Joe’s.
Read the full story: Trader Joe's Began With a Store That Lost to 7-Eleven
8. Bubble Wrap’s inventors: two markets that did not want it
1957First prototype
In 1957 Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes tried to sell their air-filled plastic as textured wallpaper. Nobody wanted it. Greenhouse insulation failed too. Their company, Sealed Air, found its market only when IBM began using the material to protect its 1401 computer in shipping, in 1961.
Read the full story: Bubble Wrap Was Supposed to Be Wallpaper
What these founders had in common
The pattern across these stories is not that failure leads to success. Most failures simply fail. What these founders shared was that they kept something valuable from the first attempt, whether a skill, a team, a material or a reputation, and changed the part that had not worked.
For more, see the famous companies that almost went bankrupt and the famous companies started with little money.
Every figure on this page comes from the 8 stories linked above, where the sources are listed. Read how we check them in our editorial standards.