How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?

I had self doubts when I was a freshman in high school. I was 14 years old and not very mature, and there were a few incidents in my freshman year. I learned in a very competitive environment. The high school environment that I played in was very intense, and I learned how to be stoic and go out and compete.

People not believing me. It's getting a little easier, but it's funny how people will say, "I don't think you can do that." Then you do it, and they say "That was great" and you say, "Well, I've got this other idea." "Naw, I don't think you can do that." So you do it again. When I said I was going to find the Titanic , no one believed it. When I said I was going to find the Bismarck , everyone believed it, and then I failed in my first attempt to find the Bismarck . So people expect you to succeed, but they don't want to stick their own necks out, and so risk-taking can be very lonely at times. You know that classic saying, which is very true: "Failure is an orphan, but success has many fathers." I'll tell you, when I'm most at risk, I look around, and there are not a whole lot of people there. But as soon as I succeed, they say, "We were always there." And I say, "Yeah, but 500 miles behind me."

I didn’t fear failure. I expected failure. I think I’ve always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than success. The success took me by surprise and it frightened me.

We have failed seven times up at bat, and we strike out, and I think, "How can I learn from that failure? What went wrong? What could I have done differently?" You have to take it apart to understand your failures. Failures teach you much more than your successes. Sometimes it is better just to pause on a setback, on a failure, on a screw-up, and say, "What did I learn from this?" You learn how to do it better and you recommit yourself.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

I applied to one firm in every sector. This was the most half-hearted job search. “I’ll apply for that management consulting firm and this investment bank…” and I applied for five jobs altogether, because my heart wasn’t in it. And thankfully… I’m so glad I didn’t get any of those big jobs! Because that made this decision easier.

I had such failure for the first ten years in Silicon Valley. General Magic — over a billion dollars invested in 1990 dollars! Could you imagine what that is today? The best team in the world. We were told we were gonna topple Microsoft and all these companies.

Day one of my first job out of college, my boss found out that I didn't know how to enter data into Lotus 1-2-3. That's a spreadsheet—ask your parents. His mouth dropped open and he said, ‘I can't believe you got this job without knowing that”—and then walked out of the room. I went home convinced that I was going to be fired. I thought I was terrible at everything… but it turns out I was only terrible at spreadsheets.