Jobs isn't celebrating mere stubbornness here—he's acknowledging that talent and ideas are nearly worthless without the unglamorous willingness to endure rejection, boredom, and the long stretches between breakthroughs. Most people assume successful founders possess some rare visionary gift; Jobs suggests the real separator is far more democratic and therefore far more damning: anyone could theoretically succeed if they simply refused to quit when circumstances became tedious. Consider a software developer pitching the same product to forty investors before finding one who believes in it—that's not brilliance, it's just showing up to meeting forty-one.