

“A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” - marksbren
http://markbrenneman.com/post/48180689916/push-on

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BerislavLopac
“I see little commercial potential for the internet for the next 10 years.”

This is my favourite of the lot, for two reasons:

a) Gates said it on COMDEX in 1994, the same year when Amazon.com was founded.

b) I would dare say that he wasn't that much off -- he said _little_ (and not
"none"), and one could argue that Internet's commercial potential is still to
be fully realized. At the very least, Amazon.com itself reached its first
profitable quarter in 2001, making Gates' forecast much more accurate.

~~~
marksbren
Yes, when I read that I made sure to note the year. It is true, he was not far
off.

I would love to see what else he said around this sentence, maybe he did
recognize the huge non-commercial potential but this is the only sentence that
got attention.

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thirsteh
The actual New York Times article is funny and sad:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20080704103647/http://it.is.rice....](http://web.archive.org/web/20080704103647/http://it.is.rice.edu/~rickr/goddard.editorial.html)

Robert Goddard was ridiculed for most of his life for having such lofty
ambitions, chiefly building a machine that had even the possibility of
ascending to Mars. Yet we owe it to him (and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky) that we
have now sent machines and human beings to many worlds. I can't think of a
better example of "don't listen to the haters."

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DriveMaster
All those comments have in common one thing: they are from people who claim
that something can't be done, that others can't do/accomplish something.

Moral of the story: never claim that someone can't do something, no matter how
unfeasible it might look. They might actually do it, and you will look silly.

~~~
marksbren
I agree that you should not immediately write off something, but there is
definitely a need to lead/mentor people in the right way. When pg says, "I am
worried..." he is doing the same thing as these quotes: expressing doubt.

That is what makes it so tough. As an entrepreneur you are hearing criticism
often, sometimes it a super helpful and you need to change direction, other
times it means you are onto something HUGE. It is difficult to decide which
one it is.

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wheeee
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

To be fair the computers he was referring to were behemoths with a small army
of engineers maintaining them. How many of those are there today? Probably not
that much more than five.

