"It's an overstatement to say that the idea of Viaweb was too strong to fail. We came close to failing several times." Sounds polite and down to earth but its very true. Google, Microsoft am sure they all had times when they came close to failing. That's the good thing about being successful. The hard times are forgotten by everyone (mostly the naysayers) else apart from the person/people who really felt them most thus making that success bitter sweet.