Leo Rocco has one of the most empowering and true-to-life entrepreneurial stories you’ll ever read or hear about.
Leo’s story will prove that there is no such thing as just being “lucky.”
Listen and learn from his incredible story.
From Entrepreneur Magazine:
“No simply isn’t a choice.”
Above all else, this was the mantra that got Leo Rocco through his toughest times on the way to founding GoPago, a San Francisco-based mobile payment company that last year received millions of dollars in funding from JPMorgan Chase. Before the big deal, Rocco had dumped $500,000 of his own money into the company, maxed out his credit cards, endured three years without a paycheck, fielded numerous eviction notices and pivoted his business three times.
Leo Rocco of GoPago
“I was on fumes,” admits Rocco, who spent years working for IBM’s Rational Software group before striking out on his own. “It takes an amazing amount of resolve and mental strength to continue doing what you’re doing and fight the self-doubt that inevitably creeps in, but when you truly believe in the business you’re creating, there’s just no other way to do it.”
Rocco boasts that his penchant for perseverance likely came from his parents, Italian immigrants who came to the U.S. with nothing and built a successful tailoring business in Buffalo, N.Y.
“They taught me that if you get knocked down, you get back up; if someone stops you from driving forward, you find another way to get to where you want to go,” he says. “When failure isn’t an option, you promise yourself you won’t fail. It’s not crazy. It’s hard work.”
