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toptal

Toptal : A No-office Startup for the Freelancer Community

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In the recent wave of start-up fair around the world, many entrepreneurs have dedicated their work significantly to the start-up society. The condition of the freelancers have significantly improved in these past years, and there has been an increase in the number of freelancers worldwide. Moreover, the young generation does want to break the conventional pattern of a daily 9to5 job, but at the same time, a stable and continuous source of income is necessary, too. With all these freelancing platforms coming up, and along with that the increasing number of new start-ups that demand freelancers, are playing an ace for the rising community.

Toptal, a freelancing platform founded in 2010 by Taso Du Val and Breanden Beneschott, headquarters in Silicon Valley, California, US. The startup has brought a revolution for designers, developers, programmers and analysts, who were interested to work as freelancers.

Taso Du Val

Val had already been into different jobs and had enough experience before he co-founded Toptal. He worked as an architect in Fotolog for two years, followed by working for Slide and Art.sy as an advisor.

Toptal founders
Image Source: toptal.com

In the founding year of Toptal, Val was working on his start-up for coming up with a real-time chat engine something absolutely different from what he ended up developing. While working in this project, he needed a freelancer. But it was quite annoying to find a really dedicated freelancer with excellent skills. This was when he decided to bridge the gap between freelancers, the newborn start-ups and business firms that wanted to hire them.

Breanden Beneschott

Beneschott studied chemistry from Stanford University, and while he co-founded Toptal, he was a student in Chemical Engineering, Princeton University. Beneschott stepped into the professional world as an intern for Adam’s Group and then for Morgan Stanley. He also served as the CTO for Zandigo and director of technology for Snafue, LLC. He co-founded smsPREP in June 2007, and then, partnered with Val in 2010 to co-found Toptal.

Behind the scenes

After Val launched the company, he wasn’t really looking for a co-founder. But, he bumped into Beneschott, who was his old neighbour and had signed up in Toptal as a client. Val realized that it would be a nice deal for Toptal if they become partners as Beneschott was more of an expert, loved dealing with customers and strategies. So, Val decided to fly to Princeton as Beneschott was still a student when Val approached him. Both of them worked in a small dorm room in his university, and finally, came up with a bigger plan.

Strategies

When Val searched for a freelancer during the setup of his start-up, he really found it hard to find a skilled one. So, he wanted a thorough scrutiny process and selected only the top 3% per cent of the skilled freelancers to work on behalf of Toptal. After founding the company, he established a four-round process for selection of the candidates, though it was very time-consuming. He focused mainly on the quality as Toptal provides service to many reputed companies including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

The Success

Since Val and Beneschott lived miles apart from each other, they did not set up an office, but they were still pretty confident to cut through the noise and make it a reputed company. Since they scooped out the top 3% creamy layer amongst all the freelancers, they landed many big clients. They made $1million in revenue in the first year and worked with many talents across the globe, including Russia, Hungary and South America. Since Val was interested in working with the top-class potential stalwarts, he decided to fly to Hungary as the company spotted many excellent software developers from that area. So, in 2011 both of them fled to Budapest and started operating from there.

Initially, the company searched for software developers, business experts, programmers, but from 2015, it expanded and started hiring designers. In 2016, Toptal hired Skillbridge, a freelancer platform that offered services that marketing research, accountant, etc. related to business modelling. It eventually started adding more and more domains, and now, hires freelancers for more than 50+ sub-domains.

Funding Rounds

In the seed round, the company raised $1.4 million, Andreessen Horowitz, Quora and Adam D’Angelo, being the major investors. There was no further news of any other funding rounds since then, and the company has made impressive profits with time. In the year 2016, the company’s annual revenue turned out to be $100million.

dailymotion

The French Media Revolution : Success Story of Dailymotion

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The Internet has drastically changed the way we communicate and share media. While, most media and documents were shared via email at first, due to lack of space and other such limitations, new platforms sprouted soon enough. Presently, we are all aware of the countless media platforms which are available on the World Wide Web, ranging from YouTube to Google Drive. But way back in the early 2000s, there weren’t so many options, and that is when Dailymotion came to the rescue, becoming one of the largest video-sharing platforms in the world.

Dailymotion is European video-sharing platform owned by the French media house Vivendi and has several partners such as BBC, Bloomberg and even VICE. Read on to see how two young French computer specialists changed the way we send and share videos, by turning Dailymotion from a small idea into an empire.

About the Founders

Benjamin Bejbaum was born in Paris, France on 20th November 1976 to doctor parents. He did his schooling from Gérard de Nerval High School, in Luzarches, from where he was suspended twice for being too lazy. Though most of the staff remember him as a lazy and laid-back student who preferred playing pinball to attending school, he managed to get good grades and passed his BA with Honours. He went on to attend the University in Villetaneuse, where he graduated in Mathematics and Information Sciences.

dailymotion founders
Image Source: millionnaires.net

He was an insomniac who found it difficult to sleep, and in 1994, he found an excellent way to pass the time, i.e. with the night- gaming. With the internet and computing still in its infancy, Benjamin fell in love with computing and started teaching himself how to code. He soon started making websites and games of his own, and this later turned into a lifelong passion.

After getting turned down by his college due to his rebellious streak, Benjamin started to pick up odd jobs around time. He helped tourists in Orly, tried his hand at teleshopping and even worked at France Telecom. While trying his hand at college for the second time, he was approached by a cafe manager who offered him a job, and Benjamin quit college to start working for him. Together, they created websites and e-commerce platforms. Finally, in 2000, at the age of 24, Benjamin, along with his cousin brother, started Iguana Studio, a design company which helps people host websites.

On the other hand, Olivier Poitrey was born in 1978, in France and served as Dailymotion’s technical director up until 2015. He has a degree in graphic design and had worked at the Internet Club, freshly out of college. He later joined Digiweb, and this was where he met Benjamin Bejbaum. The two of them hit it off really well, and in 2005 founded Dailymotion.

Founding Dailymotion

Five years later, in 2005, while vacationing in New York, Benjamin took a few videos of the snowfall in Manhattan. But he was unable to send them to friends as there was no effective video sharing platform at that time. As a means to fill this void, he starts Short.tv, which was the first free site with automated video encoding. Soon, the site picked up momentum, and Benjamin dropped Iguana Studio to devote himself fully to Short.tv along with Olivier Poitrey. After a quick fundraiser, they agreed to rename their service Dailymotion.

The website started in Poitrey’s living room in Paris, with six members investing €6,000, in March 2005. By September 2006, the business roped in Atlas Ventures and Partech International and made them invest in the venture by raising over 7 million euros.

Video Rush hour: Success of Dailymotion

In 2009, owing to the growing popularity of the company, the French Government invested in the venture via a Strategic Investment Fund. In 2011, the media house Orange bought 49% of the shares of Dailymotion for €62 million, pricing the business at €120 million. But the company did not stop growing, and as the user base expanded, Orange bought the remaining 51% for €61 million in January 2013.

In May 2013, the government prevented Yahoo from acquiring a majority shareholding position in Dailymotion. Orange further pushed for an expansion of Dailymotion, trying for partnerships with Microsoft to increase the company’s presence and popularity in the US. Finally, Vivendi bought out Dailymotion from under Orange in 2015 by acquiring 80%, which they upgraded to 90% by September of the same year.

The platform soon grew and made several deals with international media houses such as Hearst Media and Bloomberg. Presently, it is available in over 25 languages with more than 43 local version serving localised content. Since then, Dailymotion has opened offices in London, San Francisco, Singapore and even, quite recently in Abidjan.

In the early days of Dailymotion, Benjamin served as the CEO and handled the company’s strategy. In June 2008, he stepped down from his position but remained a significant shareholder. Finally, in 2013, he sold off his shares in the company. In 2009, after he had resigned from Dailymotion, Benjamin launched ArtDB, which was a database of artworks and monuments. Olivier left Dailymotion in 2015, and joined Lycos Hosting, later joining Netflix in 2016.

With over 300 million monthly users, it is safe to say that the two young French boys started a largely successful and unique media revolution that changed the way we share video content.

peopleperhour

Peopleperhour : Strengthening the Freelancers Community in the UK Since 2007

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With the emergence of companies like Fiverr, Freelancer.com, Superside and definitely PeoplePerHour, the table has seemed to turn for the freelancer community around the globe. Previously, the majority of the working class didn’t support the idea of freelancing because there wasn’t any job security, no fixed earning and definitely not a long-term job assurance. But, with an increasing number of start-ups and SMEs, the demand for freelancers is escalating very fast. Clients prefer hiring freelancers over hiring an entire agency because the workflow is better, assured delivery of work within time and other factors combined it is pretty amazing for both the clients and the freelancers.

Xenios Thrasyvoulou and Simos Kitiris founded PeoplePerHour in 2007 as an online marketplace for the freelances. The company can hire the talents for a minimum of an hour which stretches up as per the need. PeoplePerHour has really increased employment among the students and senior citizens as well.

Xenios Thrasyvoulou

Xenios graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2002 with a degree in engineering, following the conventional way of pursuing business studies at Harvard Business School. Right after he graduated from Harvard, it was the time when dot com boom was becoming history and businesses again started rising. The era of the internet already hit the UK, and Xenios realized that most of the people tend to do their jobs sitting at home and not preferring the daily 9to5. The offline scheduled job was somewhere starting to lose its value. It hit him hard that why not create an entire marketplace for these people. This was like the ultimate turning point in Xenios’s life, and in 2007, he co-founded PeoplePerHour along with Simos Kitiris.

peopleperhour founders
Image Source: thegoodwebguide.co

Xenios has also founded another start-up called TalentDesk.io in January 2017.

Simos Kitiris

Simos also completed his engineering from the University of Cambridge in the same year as Xenios. He joined Amadeus as a Software Engineer, immediately after graduating, followed by working for Accenture as an IT Consultant. He left Accenture in 2006 and started working with Xenios on the PeoplePerHour project. He is the CTO of PeoplePerHour, and apart from that, he worked as an Advisor for SIP-The Tech Investment Club, Hellas Direct and BetaAngels Management LLC. In October 2013, Simos Kitiris founded another UK based start-up, Yumbles.

Founding PeoplePerHour

Dealing with the crisis of freelancers, Xenios realized that there is a huge gap between the service providers, and the clients, which led him to co-found PeoplePerHour with Simos. Founding the company in 2007, it has its office in Athens, with its headquarters based in London, UK. The most unique feature of PeoplePerHour is job or project allotted to the freelancers is hour wise. Unlike other freelancer company, when the project is uploaded along with the deadline, in PeoplePerHour the working hours might extend as long as it needs to complete the work, and the freelancers are paid accordingly.

The Success

The launch of PeoplePerHour turned out to be a great success as the employment of senior citizens in the UK increased by a great number. After retirement, many people still have the zeal to work but maybe not a 9to5. PeoplePerHour worked wonder for them, and according to the report from the UK Office for National Statistics, 358,000 people aged above 65 started working after the launch of this online platform. The mostly the retirees showed a keen interest, and by 2012, the percentage of senior citizens searching for a job increased by 137%. In this journey of 12 years almost, PeoplePerHour has served more than 1million clients and paid over £100 million to its freelancers.

Investors and Fundraising

After the opening of the beta version in 2007, the company kept expanding, and within a year, PeoplePerHour announced that their freelance community comprises of 40,000 freelancers. One of the biggest investors of PeoplePerHour is Index Ventures, and the amount of fundraising in the interim funding round was undisclosed. In 2010, the company raised funding of £425,000 from its founders and Michael van Swaaij. The company secured a fund of £2million from Index Ventures, and along with that, also launched its new iPhone app in October 2012. In the same year, PeoplePerHour was featured in the magazine, Wired UK as one of Europe’s 100 Hottest Startups of 2012.

The company today comprises of around 100 employees, with Xenios as the CEO and Simos as CTO. Even though Simos has recently opened his own start-up, he still keeps serving the community of PeoplePerHour.

Revel Systems

Revel Systems : A Point of Sale Platform Transforming the Way People Do Business

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Whether it is to manage a small store or a big inventory, keeping the records, the money, and the inventory properly is the most difficult task. To solve these problems, the POS (Point of Sale) systems have been the saviours for the business owners. And one of the most popular POS software is developed by Revel Systems, a company that was founded by Lisa Falzone and Chris Ciabarra in 2010.

Lisa Falzone

Falzone was a Stanford alumnus and graduated in 2007. While in college, she participated in swimming competitions for Stanford, and won two conference title in 2004 and 2005, as the Cardinal swimming program member.

Her participation in swimming landed her, her first job as a swimming instructor. Along with that, she even completed different internships in various fields, including finance, public relations, marketing, human resources, and venture capital.

Revel Systems Founders
Image Source: fortune.com

Despite good scope in swimming, she was always interested in entrepreneurship and starting her business. Her first venture was a bathing suit distribution company. She had also started a business to sell kids’ toys which became quite popular. And before starting Revel, she even built a website, where people could sell their expertise, meaning, they could teach people their skills online.

Meanwhile, when life was going really smooth, she, while moving a couch, injured her backbone, and was bedridden for a long time. Being a workaholic, she started a new blog, where she used to put inspirational quotes and stories.

Chris Ciabarra

Ciabarra, on the other hand, was another serial entrepreneur. He is an Italian-American, who had been building and selling websites since he was in high school. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 2000. In 2004, he joined the Alvernia University, where he finished a master’s degree in Business Administration.

With an entrepreneurial soul, Ciabarra started his first successful business, a security software firm, Network Intercept. Other than that, he even built Interceptor.net, Scan-on-the-Go Secure, Adrenaline cell phone app, and Nano-stealth. He is a member of the Forbes Technology Council, and the International Frozen Yogurt Association.

Founding Revel Systems

While Falzone was running her blog, Ciabarra came into her contact through the same blog. Ciabarra was a regular visitor of the blog and used to comment on the blogs regularly. Soon, the two became good friends, and the two eventually ended up launching an iPhone ordering app.

The users could easily see the iPhones, select one, and order it through the app. Later in 2010, this partnership among the two led to founding Revel Systems, a company that makes iPad point of sale systems. The company integrates with third-party vendors, and has an open API, allowing others to customize the POS system.

Revel Systems develops Point of sale systems that can be operated from both mobile devices (Apple) as well as via Web browser, connecting devices like a receipt printer, cash drawer, and card swipe. Revel Systems have further extended its service to the retail, restaurant and kitchen services like Retail POS, Grocery POS, Drive-through POS, Food Truck POS, and Restaurant POS, etc. These systems are customizable such that the users can change the settings according to their needs. The end users can easily make online orders through Facebook and Twitter integration on the platform.

The Success

The company’s idea had a great impact on the investors, such that in just one year, the company received $3.7 million in funding from DCM. In 2014, Revel partnered with Intuit Inc., and the latter also led the Series C-2 round for the company. The partnership was to together create Quickbooks Point for Intuit Inc.

In 2015, the company hosted its Series C round of funding receiving $110 Million in funding with a $13.5 Million from Roth Capital Partners. Revel Systems partnered with Apple Computers and became a member of the Apple Enterprise Mobility Program in the same year. The next year, Revel partnered with Shell Global.

The company has also partnered with major payment service providers, including PayPal, FirstData, Mercury Payments, LevelUp, etc. The company has also started reward programs for users by partnering with LevelUp, Punchh, LoyalTree, and Synergy.

The company’s major clients include Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen, Forever Yogurt, Little Caesars Pizza, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, Twistee Treat, etc.

Awards and Recognition

Revel Systems was #1 in the “Best iPad POS Systems” in the Business News Daily list. In 2013, the Revel Systems’ app was named Best Retail app by the Tabby Awards.

Falzone, for her contribution to the tech world, got recognized as one of the 30 Most Important Women Under 30 in Tech by Business Insider. Forbes Magazine also named her in the 30 under 30 list. Falzone was ranked #19 on the 40 Under 40 list by Fortune Magazine. She was also among the Eight Rising Stars in the Forbes list.

CashKaro Logo

Cashkaro : India’s first cashback based company

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Anyone who buys things online, and does enough research regarding sales will know about Cashkaro, as it is one of India’s most prominent coupons website. If you aren’t an online buying aficionado, Cashkaro allows you to use rebates, coupons and cashback to shop more efficiently and frugally.

Started in 2013, Cashkaro which was founded by couple turned entrepreneurs, Rohan and Swati Bhargava, after graduation from the London School of Economics. Here’s a look at how Swati built up such an empire, in such a short time.

The Founders

Swati Bhargava is an Investment Banker, turned business visionary from the quaint town of Ambala. She was born and brought up in Ambala, till she left for Singapore after securing a scholarship for herself. At the young age of 16, Swati won the jackpot when she got selected for the Singapore Airlines scholarship. As the small-town girl secured more than 85% in her12th grade and ended up impressing the judges and getting selected. It was Singapore that inspired the young Swati to dream bigger.

Cashkaro founders
Image Source: businessworld.in

After finishing her schooling, she joined the London School of Economics and earned an Honour’s degree in Mathematics and Economics in 2005. She then began her banking career at Goldman Sachs, where she worked both in the Investment Banking and Executive Office divisions for five years.

While as a young girl Swati dreamt of joining the Indian Foreign Services, she instead opted to turn entrepreneur due to her love for marketing and business. Swati also had plans of joining Oxford as a youngster, but later, decided to go ahead with the London School of Economics as they gave her a higher scholarship.

Meanwhile, after graduating from the London School of Economics, Rohan worked with reputed companies like Washington Square and Aladdin Capital where he oversaw acquisitions worth more than $1 billion. He then went on to start his own venture, in 2011 called Pouring Pounds, in the UK, which too, focused on coupons and cashback. Once he got back to India, he and his wife, established Cashkaro, which quickly turned successful.

Founding Cashkaro

Leaving behind a safe and secure life as Investment bankers in the UK, the Bhargavas switched their focus to Pouring Pounds, which was a coupon based business, they had in the UK in 2011. It was the resounding success of such cashback companies in the US and UK, that prompted Swati to start such a venture.

The rebate business is a multi-billion-dollar business both in the US and China. This inspired Swati and Rohan to try out something of their own, through Pouring Pounds. While Swati never felt she would move back to India while working in London, the success of their venture, convinced the couple to shift their focus to India.

The couple gained enough confidence from the success of Pouring Pounds and so decided to extend their business to India in April 2013. The company started out with a small team in India, the co-founders staying in London. The two realised that they needed funding, so the couple wrote to a few friends about raising US$250K for the business, but by the end of the day, got replies from over 20 interested parties. Within 48 hours, the duo raised US$750K as investors knew that the e-commerce market in India had unlimited potential. Swati was able to successfully convince over 500 e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Myntra, and Jabong to join their venture, and this helped spearhead the company’s impressive growth.

Cash Positive Cashkaro

Cashkaro quickly grew to become one of India’s leading coupons website, with transactions exceeding Rs 10 crores. The company successfully offers and fulfils over 5,500 exchanges daily and since its inception has helped users save a whopping Rs 200 crores.

CashKaro.com has grown to become a preeminent player in the Indian market and is the only coupons website that is venture-capitalist supported. The company has raised over $4 million through a Series A funding managed by Kalaari Capital. The business model which allowed retailers that enlisted in Cashkaro to pay them a commission, which would then pass on to the customers as cashback, found immediate success in India. This unique model ensured that their business was not impaired by GST directly.

Cashkaro Today

Today, the site has got over 150,000 registered members who save an average of Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 per year, thanks to Cashkaro. The company has over 1,500 associates including Koovs, Pepperfry, MakeMyTrip and Zoomcar to name a few.

While the idea was novel and was started from scratch, the company now has more than 80 employees. Swati’s guiding philosophy comes from the Gita, which says,” Karm karo, phal ki chinta mat karo!”, and this is something that the female entrepreneur has followed from day one to grow her business to its present glory. Currently, Swati heads Cashkaro’s marketing team and is working on plans for the company’s expansion into diverse verticals.

It wasn’t easy becoming India’s first cashback based company to raise more than $ 750,000. It took a lot of courage, knowledge, research and hard work, but it was all worth it for Swati, as she marches on a proud female entrepreneur, a flagbearer for several small-town girls with big dreams!

Linksys

Live Together, Work Together : The Husband-Wife Duo Behind Success of Linksys

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Being smart, frugal and not risk-averse helped Janie and Victor Tsao transform a small idea into a multi-million-dollar empire. Any person who uses WiFi in their homes would have heard about Linksys, a leading router manufacturer which now is owned by Cisco. Here’s a look at how the dynamic duo built a $500 million powerhouse that shaped the home networking industry.

The Founders

Janie Tsao, who was born Wu Jian, in the year 1953, in Taiwan is married to Victor Tsao, and the two of them together co-founded Linksys. The Taiwanese-native is an American entrepreneur, who sold her company to Cisco for over $500 million in 2003.

Janie pursued her bachelor’s in English literature from the Tamkang University in Taiwan. It was at the university that she met and befriended her eventual companion and business associate, Victor Tsao. The two of them fell in love, and later, moved to the United States in 1975, where they got married. The husband and wife duo then moved to Chicago in 1977, where they attended graduate school together, and later settled in California. Janie taught Information Technology at Sears Roebuck for over eight years. She has also worked as a systems manager at TRW and Carter Hawley Hale.

linksys founders
Image Source: inc.com

Victor Tsao, born in 1951 in Taiwan, pursued his Bachelor’s in computer science at the Tamkang University in Tamsui. After moving to the US, he obtained his Master’s in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology, in 1980. Victor received an MBA from Pepperdine University. On completing his education, Victor worked at reputed companies, such as Kraft Foods, T.R.W., and even Taco Bell.

Founding Linksys

Victor was 37, and working at Taco Bell, while Janie was 35 and working at Carter Hawley Hale, when they chose to start their new venture. As Victor was at a higher position at his job, Janie chose to quit hers, and launch D.E.W International. One of their associates gave them the idea of marketing connection wires, and this led to them renaming their venture Linksys. The business started as a small enterprise within the couple’s garage, and by 1991, owing to the success of its first product had generated enough profit to encourage Victor too to quit his job and work on their venture full-time.

The Tsaos had initially created the company by utilising their life savings worth $7,000. By 1991, Linksys had moved offices twice, ending up finally in a small, yet comfortable 2,000-square-foot office. Each month they sold over 8,000 products and slowly, but surely, expanded from connectors to Ethernet hubs, and cords.

When they were just starting, Victor drew no salary even while working more than 100 hours a week. He would approach US dealers during the day, and then talk to Taiwanese manufacturers at night, staying up till 3 AM on most days. The family during this period survived on the $2,000 a month salary that Janie drew. But all this hard work paid off, and by 1997, Linksys was making $32.1 million, which doubled to $65.6 million by 1998. Linksys moved once again but this time, to a massive 20,000-square-foot office.

Janie Tsao handled sales and even got the retailers Fry’s Electronics and Best Buy onboard to sell their products. These deals proved to become significant breakthroughs for the company, as it helped them triple their revenue from $21.5 in a short span of two years.

The Resounding Success

The couple has often mentioned how starting such a company was a huge gamble because they had two toddlers, aged 2 and 4 at the time. Victor often pulled in over 100 hours a week when the company was in its early days. The company’s breakthrough came when in 1999, Victor designed and created a router which cost $199. As this was the first router that cost less than $300, sales grew exponentially. That particular product alone had by 2000, raked in over $206.5 million for Linksys.

Often hailed as the maker of the modern home networking system, the company had by 2004 established itself as the main player, which controlled 49% of the networking market. With sales crossing $538 million, the success of the company started attracting significant media attention. So much so, that in 2002, Cisco Systems approached the Tsaos, and on March 2003, the couple decided to sell their company.

In 2003, the couple sold Linksys to Cisco Systems for $500 million, worked there as senior vice presidents until 2007. Following this, the pair called its quit, shifting their attention to Miven Venture Partners, which is an investment agency they had established back in 2005.

The couple credit their no-nonsense attitude for the success of Linksys, as they took risky steps at the right time, always got their products out faster than their competitors, and even kept costs down. There is much we can learn from this story of trials, tribulation and success, as it is one that celebrates hard work and determination.