Famous People Who Failed Before They Succeeded

In 1985, Steve Jobs was fired from his own company (which he created with his friends) because he was considered "uncontrollable" and his projects — unviable. Steve returned in 1996 when Apple, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, decided to buy the new small company he had created. Since then, Apple became highly successful again.

Before launching Microsoft, Bill Gates was a Harvard University dropout and co-owner of a failed business called Traf-O-Data. Driven by his passion for computer programming, Gates built what would become the world's largest software company. Microsoft went public in 1986, and by the next year its rising share price made then-31-year-old Gates the world's youngest self-made billionaire. An investor in the initial public offering would have seen a return of 30,207 percent.

A lot can happen in few years. You can go from the vice president of engineering for Yahoo, to a guy looking for a job at Facebook, to a startup founder, to a guy that just sold that startup to Facebook for a jaw-dropping $19 billion.

And that's exactly what happened to WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton. In 2009 he applied for a job at Facebook and was rejected. Here's his sad-but-hopeful tweet.

Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for “not being creative enough,“ lost the rights to his first character, ”Oswald the Lucky Rabbit," and drove his first business into bankruptcy. When Disney started to think about doing a full-length animated movie, almost nobody else thought this was a good idea. He even had to mortgage his house and take out a loan to finish Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs because he ran out of money. When the movie was finally released, it was highly praised by critics and brought in $8 million, making it the most successful sound film made to that date.

Oprah Winfrey was fired from one of her first jobs because she was "unfit for TV.

People know him because of his iconic white suit and bow tie. Colonel Sanders was the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). Yet, the zany Sanders got off to a rocky start in life. In fact, it wasn’t until the age of 62 that he set out with a $105 social security check in hand to pitch his chicken recipe to restaurants. 1,009 folks told him he was crazy, but he didn’t give up.Sanders worked many jobs including fireman, tire salesman, insurance salesman, and of course, a cook. He brewed up his secret chicken recipe between 1939-1940 when he figured out how to pressure fry the chicken in a faster and more consistent product all the time. He was at the age of 50 when that happened.However, it wasn’t until 1952 that he hit the road and began trying to sell his franchise-model chicken restaurant. The first restaurant that he landed was based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, which became the first Kentucky Fried Chicken. The restaurant tripled its sales within a year where 75% of that revenue was from the colonel’s chicken.The company grew and expanded faster than he could have ever imagined. In 1964, at the age of 74 years old, Sanders sold the company for $2 million dollars to a group of investors led by Jack C. Massey and John Y. Brown Jr. He retained the rights to the Canadian franchises and stayed on as a salaried goodwill ambassador to the company.