127: How Dyson Turned 5,127 Failures Into a $15B Empire (Part 1)

The discipline of building something nobody wanted to exist.

Hey everyone, Chase here.

Last month we told the story of Hermès — a brand that built $220 billion in value without a marketing department.

This month, a different kind of discipline.

This is the story of a man who spent 15 years building prototypes in a freezing garage while his wife supported their family of five on an art teacher's salary.

Every major manufacturer told him no.

The industry had a $500 million reason to make sure his invention never reached the market.

And the number that would eventually become the most powerful piece of marketing copy his company ever created?

5,127.

That's how many prototypes James Dyson built before he got it right.

This is Part 1 — from broken vacuum to 5,126 failures.

In this issue, you'll learn:

• Why the entire vacuum industry knew their products were broken — and refused to fix them

• How one visit to a sawmill sparked a 15-year obsession

• The real reason every major manufacturer rejected Dyson (it wasn't the technology)

Let's get into it.

It started with a vacuum that didn't work.

In 1978, James Dyson bought a "top of the range" Hoover Junior to renovate his Cotswolds country house.

It was, by his own account, essentially useless.

Rather than sucking up the dirt, it pushed it around the room.

He pulled it apart and discovered the problem: the vacuum bag's pores kept clogging with dust. Every time you used it, suction got weaker. By the time the bag was half full, the vacuum was barely functioning.

Here's the part that should make you angry:

The manufacturers already knew this.

They had known for decades. But the replacement bag market was worth $500 million a year. Hoover, Electrolux, Miele — they were all selling you a product designed to fail so they could sell you the fix.

The vacuum wasn't broken by accident.

It was broken by design.

A sawmill solved what an entire industry wouldn't.

Most founders talk about their "eureka moment" like it was lightning from the sky.

Dyson's came from sawdust.

He was visiting a sawmill and noticed an industrial cyclonic separator — a 30-foot cone that spun sawdust out of the air using centrifugal force. No filter. No bag. Just physics.

He looked at it and thought: what if you could shrink that down and put it inside a vacuum cleaner?

His first prototype was built from cardboard and masking tape, taped to his Hoover Junior with the bag ripped out.

It picked up more dirt than the bagged machine ever had.

That was the beginning.

One variable at a time. For five years.

What followed wasn't invention. It was repetition.

Dyson called it the "Edisonian approach" — change one variable, test it, record the result, change another variable. Every single day. For five years.

He worked in a coach house behind his home. No heat. No water. No phone.

He remortgaged his house. Then again. Then again.

His wife Deirdre taught art to keep the family afloat — three kids, a mortgage, and a husband who came home covered in dust every night talking about airflow and cyclone geometry.

5,127 prototypes.

That's not a rounded number for a press release. That's the actual count. He numbered every single one.

"There were 5,126 failures," he'd later say. "But I learned from each one."

Creative Playbook: Psychology & Strategy Masterckass

Most creative decisions are made on instinct. That's fine when you're starting — but it doesn't scale, and it leaves you guessing why some work lands and other work dies.

Tomorrow at 11am PST, we're hosting Sarah Levinger and Matthew Gattozzi for a live breakdown of the psychology and strategy behind creative that actually works.

📅 2/24 @ 11am PST

You'll learn:

• The psychological principles behind creative that changes behavior

• How to build strategic creative systems that compound over time

• Live teardown frameworks you can steal and reuse

Bring your questions. Bring your work. We're breaking down creative live.

Reserve your seat →

Every manufacturer said no. But not for the reason you'd think.

By 1982, Dyson had a working prototype. A bagless vacuum cleaner that maintained constant suction. A genuinely better product.

He went to every major manufacturer in the world.

Hoover. Electrolux. Miele. Black & Decker. All of them.

Every single one said no.

A board member at one company told him:

"James, your idea can't be any good. If there were a better kind of vacuum cleaner, Hoover or Electrolux would have invented it."

But that wasn't the real reason.

The real reason was money.

Dyson's invention didn't just make a better vacuum — it destroyed the replacement bag business. A bagless vacuum meant no bags to sell. No recurring revenue. No $500 million market.

His product wasn't rejected because it didn't work.

It was rejected because it worked too well.

Every company that said no was protecting their revenue, not evaluating his technology. They looked at his invention and saw a threat to their business model, not an opportunity to serve customers better.

The loneliest part of building something new.

Between 1979 and 1984, Dyson existed in a limbo that most founders know but few talk about.

The product worked. He could prove it worked. But nobody would let him bring it to market.

He wasn't failing at building the thing. He was failing at finding someone who would let the thing exist.

He spent his savings. He burned through his remortgage money. He watched his contemporaries build careers and buy houses while he sat in an unheated garage making small adjustments to plastic cones.

His friends thought he was crazy. Industry experts told him to move on.

And every day, he went back to the coach house.

What this tells us about Creative Discipline

By 1984, James Dyson had spent six years and 5,127 prototypes building a vacuum that outperformed every product on the market.

And he had nothing to show for it.

No manufacturer would touch him. No investor was interested. The industry had a financial incentive to make sure his product never existed.

The takeaway so far: The hardest part of creative discipline isn't building the thing. It's surviving the gap between knowing it works and finding someone who'll let you prove it. Every manufacturer who rejected Dyson was protecting a business model, not evaluating a product. The lesson for anyone building something new: rejection often means you're threatening the status quo, not failing to meet it.

Most people would have quit.

Dyson didn't quit.

He went to Japan.

Next week: how a $2,000 pink vacuum in Tokyo funded the invention that would outsell Hoover, Electrolux, and every company that rejected him.

Until next time,

Chase