Everyone requires a little something for inspiring them- to achieve greater things in life. Not all personalities we know today have had a nice start. There are many who started from humble beginnings. These are people who’d acknowledge the fact that they had nothing to start with and this very fact inspired them to achieve greater things in life. Here is a look at five such people.
- MS Dhoni
Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the most successful Indian cricket captain having won the World Cup in both the 20-over and the 50-over format and has also taken India to the top of the Test rankings. He is widely regarded as one of the best finishers in limited overs cricket. But many would not know that Dhoni was a Train Ticket Examiner at the Kharagpur Railway Station from 2001-2003. His talent was spotted because of the BCCI’s small town talent spotting initiative.
- Bill Gates
Bill Gates is an American entrepreneur, investor and programmer who along with Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft which became the world’s largest PC software company. It started in 1975 in his garage where they first created the software which they sold to IBM and led them towards achieving success. Gates’ father was a prominent lawyer and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates have agreed many times that he did not have any particular study plan while he was at Harvard.
- Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs in widely recognized as the pioneer of microcomputer revolution as he and his partner Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Inc. in 1976. They did this in their parent’s garage with a small team of programmers. In mid 1968 when Jobs was 13, Jobs was given a summer job by Bill Hewlett after Jobs cold-called him to ask for parts for an electronics project. Bill Hewlett later recalled, “He didn’t know me at all, but he ended up giving me some parts and he got me a job that summer working at Hewlett-Packard on the line, assembling frequency counters…well, assembling may be too strong. I was putting in screws. It didn’t matter; I was in heaven.” In 1976, Wozniak invented the Apple I computer. After Wozniak showed it to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it, they along with Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs’ Los Altos home on Crist Drive.
- APJ Abdul Kalam
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was the 11th President of India but before that he was intimately involved in India’s civilian space program and military missile development efforts. He came to be known as the ‘Missile Man of India’. However his early childhood was very tough as he had to sell newspapers to supplement the poor income of his family.
- Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison was a man of many inventions. He holds a record 1093 US patent in his name. But before his successes, he had many failures and was even told that he was “too stupid to learn anything” by one of his teachers early on in life.