Ooshma Garg, founder of Gobble (W14), at Startup School 2016.

There’s a huge gap between how startup success is portrayed in the media and how it actually happens. Prior to participating in YC, Ooshma had been working on Gobble for three years. During that time she raised a seed round but couldn’t line up a Series A. Now, five years after Gobble started, it’s on track to hit $100M in sales during 2017. Here’s a graph of their revenue.

In her talk, Ooshma shared the three things she believes allowed Gobble to survive long enough to be the success it is today.

Grit
“Grit is your ability to keep going even when it hurts. Your body and your mission will energize you in those really tough moments and will let you keep going, if you allow it.”

Experimentation
“Product/market fit is not just an aha moment. It’s the summation of lots of broad experiments and microlearnings over many years.”

Mission
“Figuring out your mission will allow you to approach everything and everyone with something to give them. It’s very important to give with your startup so it can grow to be beyond you and become a long-term, lasting, and meaningful company.”