Before success, every entrepreneur will experience countless failures and fall into the entrepreneurial trough several times. Especially at present, the complex and changeable external environment has increased the difficulty for entrepreneurs, and many enterprises may slide into the trough of development if they are not careful.
A few years ago, at a dinner party at YC, Paul Graham, an angel investor from Silicon Valley, drew an emotional curve for entrepreneurs in the process of starting a businessThe psychological activity of entrepreneurs can be roughly divided into three stages: the excitement period, the trough period, and the stable period. In the whole entrepreneurial process, these three stages are constantly circulating, among which the trough period is the most gloomy and long.
The trough period of entrepreneurship should be the most helpless moment for entrepreneurs. The company's operation is blocked, the road ahead is foggy, as the helmsman controls the company's future direction, but does not know how to chooseHow to survive the trough and cross the cycle?These questions are difficult to find answers in traditional business textbooks.
In the eyes of outsiders, Musk, the "Iron Man of Silicon Valley", has unlimited scenery, is superb, and can always fight his way out of a desperate situation. Under the halo, Musk has experienced several darkest moments as an entrepreneur, almost breaking through the limit of what he can bear. Musk once said: Entrepreneurship is to chew glass while staring into the abyss.
Back in 2008, the global financial crisis broke out, and Musk unexpectedly slipped into a low point in his life. This year, SpaceX failed three test launches, and Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Just when his career was full of problems, his wife, who had been in love for 10 years and married for 8 years, took him to court;The original partner, the founder of Tesla, sued and crusaded against him in an attempt to kick him out;There is even a "Tesla Death Countdown" column and a series of articles ......As if they had conspired, they pointed arrows at him.
Musk was in great pain at the time. "He had sleep terrors, he only screamed in his sleep, and sometimes he seemed to be scratching me. That's really scary. I was scared, and he was desperate. Musk's girlfriend once recalled: "Sometimes he rushed into the bathroom and started vomiting, began to hunch, and his toes stiffened when he walked." ”
Most people who have experienced this kind of stress have flinched. "They're going to make bad decisions." But Musk has become more rational and is still able to make clear and far-sighted decisions, if not better. In the face of external pressure, Musk tried his best to raise funds, and also set a deadline for the SpaceX team to deliver the new rocket to Kwajalein Island within six weeks.
In September 2008, SpaceX's fourth launch was finally successful. As Musk said: "There are only a handful of countries in the world that have accomplished such feats, and such projects are generally done by the state, not by a company......."It was definitely the best day of my life!This is also the fulcrum of Musk's leap to the top.
Not long after the celebration ended, Musk began a new round of funding, because the company was almost out of food. Later, the funds raised by Musk successfully saved Tesla and SpaceX, and SpaceX also received a $1.6 billion contract from NASA when his life was at stake, allowing him to continue his unfinished space adventure.
Today, Musk is still tirelessly running many of his companies, striving for the mission of "colonizing Mars" and continuing human civilization. There were times when he had emotional breakdowns along the way, but he grew stronger and continued to be rational and make quality decisions.
Ray Dalio was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine and founded Bridgewater** one of the most profitable companies in the world.
But Dalio is not an "elite" in the traditional sense of the word, and has also experienced a desperate phase on the verge of bankruptcy. In 1982, Dalio's "Bridge Water" became well-known and became famous in the industry. When Mexico defaulted on its debt in August of that year, it became clear to almost everyone that many other countries would follow suit. This is no small deal because U.S. banks are lending to other countries as risky as Mexico, totaling about 250% of their capitalization. 
At that time, Dalio attended an economic hearing in the US Congress as an expert and confidently declared in public that we were heading for a depression, explained why, and subsequently shorted sharply**. But things turned out beyond Dalio's expectations, and the Fed's success was on the back burner. This misjudgment cost him almost everything, and the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, leaving him alone.
Dalio, who was nearly bankrupt, couldn't even raise enough money to buy a plane ticket to visit a potential client in Texas, and despite knowing that he might earn many times the price of the ticket for the service, he didn't make the trip. In the most difficult time, he borrowed $4,000 from his father to make ends meet, and sold the family's two cars to survive.
Fortunately, this low period gave Dalio time for deep reflection. "Looking back, my defeat was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it made me humble, and I needed humility to balance my aggressiveness. After that, he summarized the reasons for the failure, delved into the historical development of the economy and the market, and established a debt-cycle model.
In 2000, Dalio led Bridgewater** in designing and creating the "Depression Metric", a computerized decision-making system based on an understanding of the crisis, detailing the response to each eventuality. Since then, he has led Bridgewater** through the crisis and made profits against the trend, and has been in charge of funds of about 1.5 trillion yuan, which is one of the largest hedges in the world.
The wind rises and prospers. The wind stops, falls. In the ups and downs of the industry, entrepreneurs often fall into indescribable low moments.
Mark Twain once famously said, "History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme", everyone's entrepreneurial story is unique, and it is difficult for others to replicate, but the spiritual core of entrepreneurs may be roughly the same.
Starting from zero, an enterprise needs to constantly test and verify in order to mitigate risks and survive, which is accompanied by countless failures. Entrepreneurs must endure the frustration of continuous failure, and continue to try and succeed in the end. It's a story that happens every day in the startup world. Facing setbacks, enjoying the troughs, and constantly improving and improving are the most valuable qualities of entrepreneurs.
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