Rejected? Get Inspired by the Stories of Science and Tech Giants

Rejection hurts. Whether it‘s a "no" from your dream job, top choice school, or even a first date, having someone dismiss your abilities and potential feels like a punch to the gut. It‘s natural to doubt yourself and wonder if you‘re really cut out for success after facing rejection.

But here‘s the thing: virtually everyone who has achieved great things—from business leaders to famous scientists—has been rejected at some point. In fact, many of the world‘s most successful people faced repeated, even humiliating rejections before their breakthroughs and triumphs.

Their stories prove an important lesson: Rejection in the short-term does not determine your ultimate potential. If anything, pushing through rejection may be a necessary step on the path to greatness. When someone rejects you for being "inferior," it might just set you up to prove your true superiority.

Here are a few of the most inspiring rejection stories from science and tech giants throughout history. Next time you get a "no" and feel discouraged, remember their examples and use that rejection as motivation to persist.

Albert Einstein Was Unemployed and Rejected From Teaching Jobs

You probably know Albert Einstein as the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who developed the theory of relativity. But Einstein didn‘t waltz into success right away.

After graduating with a physics teaching diploma in 1900, the 21-year-old Einstein spent nearly two years unemployed. He applied for teaching positions but was rejected by every university. He was so desperate, his father secretly wrote to family friends begging them to find work for his son, but to no avail.

Finally, a friend‘s father landed Einstein a job…as a third-class examiner at the Swiss patent office. The young genius was so ashamed of his lowly position, he didn‘t even tell his friends.

But that patent office job turned out to be a huge blessing. The work was easy for Einstein, leaving his mind free to ponder scientific questions. In his spare time, he developed his most groundbreaking ideas. His "miracle year" of 1905, when he published four revolutionary papers and developed the famous equation E=mc2, happened while clocking in at the patent office.

As Einstein later reflected, "A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness." His early job rejections pushed him into a slow-paced career that gave his creativity room to flourish.

Srinivasa Ramanujan Failed Out of College—Twice

Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician and a prodigy like few in history. Growing up in poverty in a small Indian village in the early 1900s, Ramanujan was almost completely self-taught. Obsessed with math from a young age, he independently developed highly advanced formulas and theorems.

But Ramanujan‘s all-consuming passion for math made him a terrible student in every other subject. He won admission to the University of Madras on a scholarship, but lost his scholarship when he failed all his other classes. He tried again at another university, only to fail once more.

Without a degree, Ramanujan pursued math research alone while half-starving. He filled notebooks with groundbreaking formulas in complete isolation. Occasionally, he sent samples of his work to academics, claiming he had developed revolutionary mathematical concepts. Some dismissed him as a fraud, while others were intrigued but doubtful.

Finally, Ramanujan‘s work reached British mathematician G.H. Hardy at Cambridge University. Hardy immediately recognized the work of a rare genius and arranged for Ramanujan to come study with him in England.

At Cambridge, Ramanujan developed thousands of formulas in number theory, algebra, and infinite series. His work opened up entire new areas of mathematical research. He was elected to the London Mathematical Society in 1917 and became the youngest Fellow in the history of the Royal Society in 1918.

While Ramanujan died of illness at only 32, his contributions to mathematics were so significant that researchers are still studying the formulas in his old notebooks today. Google has even developed algorithms based on Ramanujan‘s work. All that might never have happened if Ramanujan had passed his other classes or found a local job instead of pursuing his passion.

Jack Ma Was Rejected From 30 Jobs—Including KFC

Jack Ma is the co-founder of Alibaba, the massive China-based conglomerate that includes online retail, Internet, and technology companies. With a net worth of over $40 billion, Ma is one of the richest people in the world. But his early career was paved with harsh rejections.

After graduating from college in 1988, Ma applied for 30 different jobs—and was rejected from all of them. Most painfully, he applied for a job at the newly opened KFC in his hometown, only to be the sole applicant rejected after 24 other candidates found success.

A few years later, Ma heard about the Internet and saw an opportunity. He started China Pages, a directory of Chinese companies looking to partner with businesses abroad. China Pages made Ma one of the first Internet entrepreneurs in China, and he went on to work for the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.

Ma‘s attempts to start Internet businesses floundered until 1999, when he gathered 17 friends in his apartment and convinced them to invest in his vision for an online marketplace he called "Alibaba." The site allowed Chinese manufacturers to connect with buyers overseas. It caught on like wildfire and expanded into various other platforms, like Taobao, Alipay, and Tmall.

Today, Alibaba is one of the largest retailers and e-commerce companies in the world. The company has expanded far beyond retail into Internet services, payment systems, and cloud computing. But it all might never have happened if Ma had landed one of those first 30 jobs he sought. When even KFC won‘t hire you, all you can do is strike out on your own and forge a new path!

WhatsApp Co-Founder Brian Acton Was Rejected by Facebook Before Selling His Company to Zuckerberg for $19 Billion

After more than a decade as a software engineer at Yahoo and Apple, Brian Acton was looking for his next opportunity in 2009. He applied for engineering jobs at two of the hottest tech companies at the time: Twitter and Facebook.

Both rejected him. Facebook turned Acton down for a job not just once, but twice.

The rejections stung, but they also convinced Acton that he might thrive better building his own company than joining someone else‘s. Together with colleague Jan Koum, he formed WhatsApp, an instant messaging app that quickly gained popularity worldwide.

Just five years later, Facebook came calling again—not with a job offer, but wanting to acquire WhatsApp for a whopping $19 billion. Acton signed the deal, making him a billionaire overnight and proving that Facebook‘s initial rejection was the best thing that could have happened to him.

After leaving Facebook in 2017, Acton summed up his incredible story with a tweet that went viral: "It‘s important to understand what rejection means. Rejection teaches us that something is wrong. Rejection encourages us to take a different path. And rejection inspires us to work even harder."

Airbnb Was Rejected by Investors Who Thought the Idea Was Crazy

It‘s hard to imagine a world without Airbnb. The short-term rental platform has revolutionized the way we travel and find accommodations. But back in 2008, the idea sounded crazy—even dumb—to many.

Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk were struggling to get their startup off the ground in San Francisco. The idea was simple but untested: connect travelers with locals willing to rent out a room or apartment on a short-term basis. But as they pitched investors, nearly everyone balked.

Venture capitalist Reid Hoffman met Chesky and was intrigued, but his partners thought the idea of letting strangers sleep in your home seemed crazy. Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham rejected Airbnb‘s application to his accelerator program, telling Chesky he thought the market was too small.

In their first round of investment pitches, Airbnb met with seven prominent angel investors in Silicon Valley. Five immediately rejected the idea, while the other two didn‘t even bother responding. Still, the founders persisted, working side gigs to keep Airbnb afloat and pursuing every path they could think of to get backing.

Finally, after maxing out their credit cards, the guys made one final attempt to finance Airbnb: they designed and sold special-edition cereal boxes during the 2008 presidential election. The publicity stunt worked, earning them $30,000 and catching the attention of Y Combinator. The accelerator accepted Airbnb in its next batch.

From there, Airbnb quickly caught on and expanded globally. Just a decade later, the company is valued at over $30 billion and has served over 400 million guests. As for those seven investors who rejected Chesky and company in 2008? They missed out on a return of over $1 billion each.

Instagram Founder Kevin Systrom Was Rejected From An Elite Google Internship Program

Before founding Instagram, Kevin Systrom was a typical Silicon Valley striver. He interned at Odeo, the startup founded by Evan Williams that would go on to create Twitter. He was one of the first employees at travel search startup Next Stop, which Facebook acquired in 2010.

But before all that, Systrom was a fresh Stanford grad applying for internships. He had an unusual background: he had studied management science, not computer science like most elite tech interns. But he had taught himself to code and was a talented self-starter.

When Systrom interviewed for a spot in Google‘s prestigious Associate Product Manager (APM) program, he had an influential backer: high-ranking Googler Salar Kamangar. Kamangar pushed for Systrom to be admitted to the program, arguing that his coding skills and initiative made him a great candidate even without a computer science degree.

But Google‘s APM program had a firm rule: only comp sci grads could be considered. Systrom was rejected despite Kamangar‘s advocacy. Stung, Systrom decided to leave Google to pursue opportunities elsewhere.

That rejection turned out to be the catalyst Systrom needed to strike out on his own and start building. After honing his skills at other startups, he and Mike Krieger founded Instagram in 2010. They grew the photo-sharing app to over 30 million users within two years. In 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram—the company that had rejected Systrom‘s internship application a few years earlier—for $1 billion.

The Lesson: Rejection Is Often a Necessary Step on the Path to Success

No one likes hearing "no." Rejection is painful, embarrassing, and can make you question your own talents and worth. But the stories of the most successful people in science, business, and technology prove that early rejection is often a critical part of the journey to later success and impact.

Many of the people we revere as geniuses and visionaries—from Einstein to the founders of multi-billion dollar companies—faced years of rejection before achieving their breakthroughs. If they had gotten a "yes" to their early applications and ideas, they might never have gone on the paths that led them to revolutionize their fields.

So next time you face a rejection that feels devastating, try to think of it instead as a redirection. Maybe that "no" is pushing you away from a dead end or a path that wouldn‘t let you fully tap your potential. Maybe the sting of that rejection is the very motivation you need to prove the doubters wrong.

Persistence in the face of rejection isn‘t just admirable—it‘s often a prerequisite for doing truly great things. When the world rejects you for being inferior, that might be the key to unlocking your superiority. You just have to embrace the "no" as a necessary step on the way to a life-changing "yes."