Failed resume submissions often nurture the next opportunity.

Elon Musk once applied to the then-dominant Netscape but was rejected. Instead of waiting, he took action—thus Zip2 was born.

Jack Ma's story is similar. After repeatedly hitting a wall in KFC and police recruitment interviews, being the only one rejected, he sparked the idea of founding Alibaba in such adversity.

Brian Acton was turned down by both Twitter and Facebook before founding WhatsApp. The app was later acquired by Facebook for $19 billion, proving how blind those who rejected him were.

Brian Chesky failed to secure a designer position in San Francisco, with almost no savings and facing rent pressure. Instead of giving up, he discovered the entrepreneurial opportunity of Airbnb amid his struggles.

Stories like these are also common in the tech industry. Steve Wozniak tried five times to present the Apple I prototype to his then-employer Hewlett-Packard but was rejected because the company believed personal computers had no market. It was this rejection that prompted him to co-found Apple with Steve Jobs.

The crypto ecosystem has similar turning points. Hayden Adams once worked at Siemens but was later fired. The turning point came from a friend's suggestion—learn Solidity. He studied the language and then turned Vitalik's formula of x*y=k into reality, founding Uniswap, which eventually became one of the foundational infrastructures in DeFi.

Every closed door may open an unexpected window.