
Learn to think big - gmays
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2013/12/learn-to-think-big.html
======
lazyjones
For the first time throughout his series of blog posts, I respectfully
disagree.

Thinking big seems to be the favourite pastime and recommendation based on
hindsight bias of people who have already made it. It's not the reason why
projects are successful and it's very likely not something that will get you
taken seriously by a VC investor or startup angel (too much delusion of
grandeur does not befit people who don't even have a working prototype).

It's much more important to _try to solve real problems_ (that hopefully
affect many people). If your solution a) works and b) turns out to scale to
something huge, then you've made it. If it doesn't scale, you might still end
up with a successful und useful, albeit smaller company. Would that be such a
bad outcome?

~~~
soneca
Exactly. Take Facebook, Zuckerberg wasn't trying to be the next Zuckerberg at
the beginning.

Take a look at this very early interview with him:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ5otpv6kTw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ5otpv6kTw)

Skip to 3:57, he is saying "doesn't have to be more" after being at 29
schools. He is worried about quality over quantity. If Facebook started with
this mentality and landed a billion users, why anyone would think that think
big has any relation with becoming big?

~~~
visakanv
"I'm pretty sure that, given those instructions, young Boz would build a
social network and make it immediately available to everyone. It would
obviously seem like a mistake to him to limit membership to a small subset of
the population. Some other social network might come along and just open its
doors to everyone and he would never overtake them!

As you probably already know, the situation I describe actually happened;
there was one social network that grew incrementally while another opened its
doors to the world. Fast forward five years and things haven't turned out the
way young Boz might have expected. As it turns out, the path Facebook took to
connecting everyone in the world was not the shortest and that has made all
the difference. By starting small and expanding outward we built a community.
By integrating networks that had originally been separate we had to focus on
privacy. By throwing open the floodgates of growth in increments rather than
all at once we were able to focus on keeping a consistent design and building
scalable infrastructure. These things are now part of the DNA of our company
and they affect everything we build." \- Boz

[https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=82081294140](https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=82081294140)

~~~
wisty
IMO, Facebook won because it uses real names. It's a lot faster to find people
(especially people you've lost touch with) when you can see their names.

~~~
collyw
I have lots of facebook friends without real names.

------
jayp
At least Gabriel is upfront about it: investing contributed a big part to the
changing of his world view. Here is how a cynic may see it:

(1) Risk of time (and other things, including money) => go safe.

(2) Risk of money (only) => go big.

I am genuinely not sure[1], but it does occur to me that this could be the
underlying difference in approach between an investor and a founder (more
specifically: a founder still looking for his safety net.)

\---

[1] To tell you the truth, I find myself leaning towards "going big" of late.
But until I found something tangible, it's just an exercise in vanity.

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bambax
It would help to define what "changing the world" means to the author (and
whether it's a good thing; not every change is desirable; 9/11 changed the
world for the worse).

It could be argued that only two tech companies actually changed the world
since 1980: Microsoft and Google. Amazon, maybe.

But for example, I don't think Apple, Sun, Oracle, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter...
"changed the world". They are very big, wildly successful companies, they make
products and software that people enjoy (me included), but they didn't turn
the world into a different place than it was before.

~~~
AznHisoka
Hmm... Not a FB fan at all, but when a billion people in the world open FB for
at least a few minutes every single day.. that's gotta count for something
right?

Likewise, when a billion people are using the iPhone to call their loved ones,
that's changing the world. I mean, that's as good as it's gonna get, short of
inventing the cure to cancer, or blowing the Earth up.

~~~
pedalpete
Interesting that you suggest the iPhone changed the world because 'a billion
people are using the iPhone to all their loved ones'. You realize they would
have just used a phone before the iPhone, and therefore, the iPhone hasn't
changed that process.

This is the point where I suggest the iPhone didn't REALLY change that much
for most of us. Sure, it's easier to get maps and directions now (though old
Blackberrys had that too). But the massively world changing innovations of
smartphones are really minor conveniences wrapped in nice packaging.

Unless, of course, you live in less-developed countries, where a smart-phone
may be your first computer, or even your first phone, and offers a connection
to information and the rest of the world that you didn't have before.

~~~
jklp
> This is the point where I suggest the iPhone didn't REALLY change that much
> for most of us. Sure, it's easier to get maps and directions now (though old
> Blackberrys had that too)

For me it was when my parents (without any prompts from myself) got an iPhone
and started emailing / Facetiming me from it.

If you had told me 6 years ago that my parents would be able to send me email
from their phone, or be sophisticated enough to look up movie times while I'm
out having dinner with them I would have laughed.

I think what the iPhone did was make it easy for everyday people to use
technology that was only available to a select few. Not just with their
technology (which made it easy to use) but also their advertising / marketing
which made everyone aware of it.

------
loceng
Investors want the big ideas, though they don't want to pay for them. Tesla
Motors and SpaceX would have never of started if Elon Musk didn't have money
from PayPal being sold. This is why unless you know you'll have the funds to
work on the big ideas yourself, it could be time and energy invested that will
leave you not benefitting from it. Really it comes down to learning to enjoy
what you're doing in the moment, and be working towards something bigger. It
helps knowing what that bigger thing is, though I imagine not always
necessary.

~~~
visakanv
And consider how even Tesla started with the Roadster, and then the Model S-
targeted at small demographics. Consider how SpaceX is working on reusability
of rockets.

They might be "thinking big", but they're also "working small". They have to.

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mbesto
Good stuff. The one validator of thinking big is when people constantly
detract your ideas - OR - equally detract you from your pursuit to tackle
those ideas.

Can you imagine someone coming up to you in a Twitterless world and saying
"Hey, do you want to invest $10k into my startup that allows people to
communicate with each other in 140 characters or less, in an online open
forum?"

------
rmason
He had some small successes and decided to swing for the fences. That's not
the right strategy for everyone.

Startups are a high risk endeavour. There are much better odds in having a
small success than a large one.

------
gmays
Sometimes how you decide to tackle the problem matters more than the size of
the idea.

------
wudf
Well if you have talent, experience, connections, and a proven and/or good
team, then yes you should consider thinking big.

