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Key Takeaways

Recognition feels satisfying until it becomes the only measure of whether a win counts.

Founders are prone to keep arguing with old critics long after customers have already answered the question and proved the critics wrong.

Ambition is useful, but building your life around someone else’s approval is expensive.

In the 1880s, Gustave Eiffel was already one of France’s best-known engineers .

He had built railway bridges, viaducts, stations and other large iron structures across Europe. His company had developed a reputation for doing things that seemed difficult, expensive or slightly mad, then finding a way to make them work.

Then, Eiffel took on his most ambitious project yet. For the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, he proposed a 300-meter iron tower that would rise above the city.…