I started my first business in 2015 and found some modest success around 2020. Had I known I’d wait five years to see a breakthrough, I wouldn’t have started the business.

How did I persist? By not having a Plan B. The very idea of going back to a 9-to-5 job gives me headaches. So, I had no choice but to wait and make the business work.

But waiting is hard and easier said than done. Many times in those 5 years I wanted to quit. Because those years, I was building a business that I wasn’t sure would work. I used to wonder, “What if all this effort fails?” That uncertainty, coupled with the constant difficulties that come with running a business, almost made me slip into depression.

Today, it’s easy to look back and say, “Glad I waited”. But think of those early days when I worked constantly and still saw little to no results. Regardless of the results, I needed to process the payroll each month. Often on Sunday evenings, I used to think about supplier payments I needed to make on Monday.

This is the story of every business owner. At least in the early days.

Why struggle so much? Because of the hope that one day suddenly those efforts will compound and give stellar results. Just like an athlete prepares for four years for the Olympics. Hoping all those preparations, pain, and effort will pay off big in one of the world’s biggest sporting events.

The problem?

In this era of instant gratification, it’s tough for a new entrepreneur to wait. Pizza and groceries are getting delivered in 30 minutes with the click of a button. Short videos are getting more popular as people don’t have time to watch 15-minute-long videos. There were days when letters used to take days to reach the recipient. These days, instant messaging apps deliver your messages in seconds. Mobile games shower us with instant virtual rewards upon reaching a milestone. Online stores constantly email us discount coupons.

So once a new entrepreneur doesn’t see results in a few weeks or months, they get frustrated. As a result, they either quit and go back to a job. Or they quit and start a new business hoping for quick success this time. What they don’t understand is there’s no shortcut. Irrespective of whether your business idea is good, you need to give time to your idea. Especially in this competitive world. Think in terms of years, not days or weeks.

Have you heard of James Dyson, a 78-year-old visionary entrepreneur? He’s the founder of Dyson Ltd, a billion-dollar company known for innovative appliances like vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, air purifiers, etc.

In 1978, he started out in his garage with a mission to create a bagless vacuum cleaner. Back in those days, vacuum cleaners had disposable bags that were used to collect dust, and as dust filled the bag, the bag needed replacing. There were two problems there. When dust filled the bags, people disposed of the bags and had to buy new ones, which cost money. Also, as dust filled the bags, the vacuum’s airflow got restricted and hence the vacuum’s performance reduced.

Dyson wanted to solve those two problems.

He had an idea for a vacuum cleaner that used cyclonic separation technology instead of traditional dust bags. Manufacturers and investors laughed over this idea. With no manufacturer ready to build a prototype and no investors ready to back the idea, Dyson could have easily given up.

But he didn’t.

Over the next 15 years (1978 to 1993), he built 5,126 prototypes of his vacuum cleaner. Yes, in his garage.

In 1993, he launched his first successful bagless vacuum cleaner called the Dyson DC01. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Today, Dyson Ltd.’s yearly revenue is 7 billion pounds.

Now close your eyes and imagine for a moment: 15 years of working on a product that may not work. And iterating the product 5,126 times without giving up.

It’s easy to look at successful companies’ revenue and profit numbers and immediately think they got lucky. Either with the idea, the timing, or with the team. Nobody thinks of the years they struggled to get noticed. The early years when they kept iterating and improving their products in silence.

Thomas Edison famously failed 10,000 times before inventing the lightbulb. And he was right when he said he found 10,000 ways that didn’t work. That’s the mindset today’s entrepreneurs need to cultivate.

I say mindset because waiting is more of a mindset than a skill. A skill is like learning how to drive. If I drive well, I can be called a skilled driver. There’s a science behind every skill. But mindset is all about how your mind approaches a challenge. What if a skilled tech founder’s first product fails? How do they react? This is where mindset comes in.

These days, everybody is talking about AI (artificial intelligence), and a company name you keep hearing is Nvidia. It’s a trillion-dollar company that designs GPU (also known as AI chips).

In 1993, Jensen Huang, a former AMD engineer, founded Nvidia in California. In 1999, Nvidia invented the GPU (graphics processing unit) chip, which revolutionized real-time graphics processing. The intended use-case was computer games. Now, this was back when computers themselves weren’t popular, let alone games.

Interestingly, these GPU chips handled millions of tasks simultaneously. Jensen saw this as an opportunity. So, in 2006, Nvidia launched CUDA, a platform that allowed developers to use GPUs for non-graphics tasks like machine learning. That was a visionary move, though the platform didn’t have a big market back then. We’re discussing a time before smartphones or iPhones existed.

Around 2012, AI was in early stages, and some AI developers started using Nvidia GPUs to create AI models for image recognition. A big breakthrough. But the AI market was still niche.

In 2022, OpenAI launched the revolutionary AI chat app called ChatGPT, which changed the AI industry. Suddenly, the demand for AI chips went through the roof. Nvidia is benefiting from this AI boom and currently holds a monopoly in AI chips. AI chips are like GPUs optimized specifically for AI.

1993 to 2025: 32 years.

The success Nvidia has today was 32 years in the making. In 1993, Nvidia was a small private startup valued at less than $10 million. Today, Jensen’s Nvidia is the world’s most valuable company.

If you look at Jensen’s social media profile, he calls himself a former dishwasher (his first job was at Denny’s where he served as a dishwasher). In that way, he wants to tell the world that success results from hard work and patience.

If the founder of the world’s most valuable company tells you to wait, listen to him.