Wale’s 2015 The Album About Nothing is one of the best albums of the 2010s and certainly his best project to date. The album explores various themes, such as fame, relationships, social issues, and self-reflection.
Wale has said that when working on the album he was at one of the lowest points of his life. The album proves this, it has soul, pain, joy and a lot of self-reflective tones.
Sad as it may be, not much motivates an artist to create his best work like pain, sadness and depression.
On the side, in an industry, I understand, founders and start-ups. Very few things build amazing companies like a rejected founder.
Co-founder and chairman of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, recalls a story of how they were motivated to succeed no matter what when he and his co-founders were allegedly told by a Yahoo executive in 2005 that Reddit was “a round error compared to us”.
Alexis Ohanian revealed that he framed the words “you are a rounding error” for his office — and offered ridicule of Yahoo.
“My favourite part is that he motivated me for the next decade with that shutdown. I literally put it on the wall at the office the next day,” wrote Mr Ohanian.
Reddit today is valued at USD10 billion, with 430 million monthly users worldwide, 70 million daily active users visit the platform and approximately 850 million users use Reddit at least once a month. Yahoo was valued at USD 4.8 billion during its 2016 acquisition down from it’s USD 125 billion at its peak.
A rejected founder who can buckle down and focus on their work and truly believe in what they are doing, constant rejection is nothing but motivation to keep going and prove everyone wrong.