I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

Steve Jobs made this remark while reflecting on the realities of building a company—especially the long stretches of uncertainty, rejection, and near-failure that founders face. The line is associated with his public talks about entrepreneurship in the early Apple era, when he emphasized that talent and ideas are not enough to carry a startup through inevitable setbacks. In this setting, Jobs framed perseverance as a practical differentiator: many people, he argued, abandon their ventures when progress is slow or when the work becomes emotionally and financially punishing. The quote is commonly circulated as part of his advice to would‑be entrepreneurs about resilience.

The quote argues that perseverance is a decisive differentiator in entrepreneurship—so decisive that Jobs provocatively assigns it “about half” the weight of success. The claim reframes success away from a single brilliant insight and toward sustained effort under pressure: continuing to refine a product, recover from mistakes, and persist through rejection. By calling perseverance “pure,” Jobs suggests it is not reducible to intelligence, privilege, or strategy; it is a character-driven capacity to endure. The line also implies a selection effect: many people with good ideas exit early, so persistence becomes a competitive advantage simply by keeping the entrepreneur in the game long enough for learning and compounding gains to occur.