Stoked by Setbacks

Entrepreneurship

Five Empires That Started in a Garage — and the Other Lives Their Founders Almost Lived

Apple, Amazon, Harley-Davidson, Disney, and Google all started in garages, sheds, or cramped backrooms. But the wilder story isn't where they started — it's how close each founder came to never starting at all.

Mar 13, 2026

Business

The Man Who Got Fired, Got Humiliated, and Then Got Even With History

In 1985, Steve Jobs was pushed out of the company he'd built from nothing — publicly, brutally, and in a way that most people assumed was permanent. What happened next wasn't a comeback story. It was something far more interesting.

Mar 13, 2026

Culture

Before He Was America's Poet, He Was Mopping Blood Off Hospital Floors

Walt Whitman didn't write his most enduring work at a quiet writing desk. He wrote it — or rather, lived it — in overcrowded Civil War hospitals reeking of gangrene and grief. The wounds he witnessed in others became the voice that would define American poetry forever.

Mar 13, 2026

Entrepreneurship

They Said No. These 7 Founders Said Watch Me.

Every empire has an origin story. For these seven American founders, that story includes a rejection so specific and so dismissive that it almost ended everything before it started. Almost.

Mar 13, 2026

Business

The Best Thing Apple Ever Did Was Kick Out Its Own Founder

In 1985, Steve Jobs was forced out of the company he'd built from nothing in a garage. It was humiliating, public, and — as it turned out — exactly what he needed. The decade he spent in exile didn't delay his legacy. It created it.

Mar 13, 2026

Culture

Hollywood Tried to Erase Him. He Won Two Oscars Anyway.

Dalton Trumbo was one of the highest-paid writers in Hollywood — until the government threw him in prison and the industry pretended he didn't exist. What happened next is one of the most defiant creative stories America has ever produced.

Mar 13, 2026