This millennial founder got rejected 73 times before building a 9-figure coffee company. One more no, ‘I would have figured out how to sell a kidney’

Skepticism around higher education is growing. Amid a shaky job market, more than one-third of Gen Z graduates now say their degree was a “waste of money.”

But at Stanford, time on campus has proven to be a critical launchpad. Famously, alumni from the Silicon Valley-area school have gone on to found dozens of major companies, including Google, PayPal, and Snapchat. An over $100 million startup, the premium coffee and kitchenware brand Fellow, is striving to join their ranks.

Heavily caffeinated while pursuing his Stanford MBA, Jake Miller envisioned a minimalist, dual-purpose coffee steeper designed for both hot and cold brews. Since then, Fellow has grown into a retailer of dozens of products—including coffee makers, grinders, and kettles—at major retailers including Target, Costco, and Nordstrom, but the 41-year-old founder told Fortune that “It was very hard to convince people to see the future the way I did.”

Miller secured early funding through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, but when it was time to raise institutional capital, the momentum stalled. By the time Fellow finally broke through, Miller had racked up 73 rejections from angel investors and small funds. For many founders, that would have been the end of the road. For Miller, it was fuel.

“Nothing was going to stop me,” Miller said. “Each no was simply one step closer to the eventual yes, and if it would have only been no’s, like, I would have figured out how to sell a kidney.”

Persistence ended up being more than just a mindset for Miller—it was the business plan.

Miller tried jobs in construction and marketing before finding his true passion—and shaped his personal litmus test

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Miller spent his childhood in Minnesota slowly realizing he was a builder at heart. As a teenager, he sold T-shirts and bootlegged CDs to earn some cash. But after studying marketing at the University of St. Thomas, Miller hit a wall that would also be familiar to many Gen Zers today: he was uncertain about what direction his career should take.

He took a shot at home remodeling and construction, and even found what he called “early success.” But after just 18 months, he walked away because his heart wasn’t in the job.

In that fielld, he said, “you have to wake up every day crazy-obsessed with what you’re working on. I wasn’t obsessed with construction—and that’s how I knew it was the wrong category.”

The clarity came later, when he landed a marketing role at Caribou Coffee—a Minneapolis-based chain with more than 800 locations. There, Miller began to see a gap in the home-brewing market: the rise of meticulous coffee roasters was accompanied by a glaring lack of well-designed brewing equipment.

As he brainstormed ideas and pitched investors, Miller found his personal litmus test for career alignment: Does it get you out of bed in the morning even without the paycheck?

“Great entrepreneurs all think the same way,” he said. “Nothing was going to stop me.”

Fellow most recently raised $30 million in its Series B round of funding, with backers including venture capitalist Peter Fenton, who’s known for early investments in Twitter and Yelp. The company is now based in San Francisco and employs more than 100 people.

Countless business leaders—including Ray Dalio and Warren Buffett—agree: pursue what excites you

Miller isn’t alone in tying career success to genuine obsession with the work.

The same mindset shows up again and again among high-profile business leaders, who often describe enthusiasm—not just discipline—as their competitive edge.

David Risher, CEO of Lyft, put it bluntly: 

“I absolutely love my job,” he told Fortune in 2024. “I literally jump out of bed every single morning.”

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio has offered similar guidance, urging people to treat work as more than a paycheck and instead part of a broader life mission. 

“Make your passion and your work one and the same and do it with people you want to be with,” Dalio wrote on social media.

It’s advice that Warren Buffett has echoed for decades. Speaking to students at the University of Florida, the former Berkshire Hathaway CEO framed career choice as one of the most important life decisions a person makes.

“There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want,” Buffett said. “Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com