6 ms·

A lot of people here are saying $100B is too high of a goal to accomplish. The best advice of the video is to have a strong vision of the future. How will the

by max76 8y ago

A lot of people here are saying $100B is too high of a goal to accomplish. The best advice of the video is to have a strong vision of the future. How will the world be fundamentally different in 10 years compared to how it is today. Think about that change, and then build a company that will be well positioned with the new change. The stronger your vision, and the more accurate it is, the better your chance of success is. In 10 years there will be a dozen 1 trillion dollar companies. The number of $100B companies is going to explode as well. More and more commerce is happening on the internet which scales much easier than brick and motor commerce. More and more goods purchased are entirely virtual, and have huge margins. More and more value is in software, which can be copied and used without practical limits. If your goal is to start a company that grows to $100B there has never been a better time to do that than right now.

qaq 8y ago
Honestly sounds like a strange goal to have what is special about 100B why not 200 or 50? Is it even meaningful to have a number as a goal?
- max76 8y ago
  It's important to have an order of magnitude as a goal. In general the size of a company in dollars correlates with their impact on the world. The best talent is interested in making a big impact on the world. 2x or .5x won't make much of a difference, but if you are thinking 100x or 1,000x smaller then it will have an impact on your business in the early stages. If your goal is to make a $100M company you aren't likely thinking big enough to attract good talent and partners.
  - yongjik 8y ago
    I don't buy it. Why would the best talent (according to your criterion) join some nobody who aims for $100B, when they can join ~$100B companies and start making impacts right now.
    - max76 8y ago
      The video offers a great example of why a talented engineer would choose to join a startup (1990s Google) versus work in a large established company (Intel). It also turned out to be very beneficial for Paul Buchheit to join Google instead of stay at Intel. There are a lot of talented engineers that prefer working for startups than large corporations. There are not enough talented engineers to staff all of the start ups. It's a competition for companies to attract the best talent.
  - qaq 8y ago
    Do you have an example of anyone who built a 100B company who actually had that as a goal ?
    - max76 8y ago
      Google's mission statement: "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful" Microsoft's old mission statement: (Paraphrase) To put a computer on every desk and in every home. Amazon's mission statement: "...build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online" These mission statements don't specifically state they want to build a $100B company, but it seems pretty obvious that a company that does the things in their mission statement would be worth $100B.
      - qaq 8y ago
        Thats a pretty big stretch
      - rokhayakebe 8y ago
        In the case of Google, I am not sure they had a $10 million dollar vision. They tried to sell (unsuccessfully) to Yahoo for $1 Million.
      - throwawayinside 8y ago
        You’re actually correct. There’s a great story about Larry Page telling John Doerr that he thought it could be a $100 Billion company in their first meeting.
dreamdu5t 8y ago
None of the $100B companies started with the goal of being $100B companies...
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I think it would a huge distraction to think about billions while you still are struggling with millions. Focus on that goal first and then see where to go from there.
dxhdr 8y ago
> In 10 years there will be a dozen 1 trillion dollar companies. The number of $100B companies is going to explode as well. Devil's advocate, is that actually a good thing? Might be good for the consumer but not great for the laborer. Working for someone else is a bummer. Increasing consolidation means increasingly more of us will be in that position.
- jniedrauer 8y ago
  > Might be good for the consumer I find this highly unlikely as well.
  - redmaverick 8y ago
    Why not? Hypothetical situation: Healthcare/Surgery could be practically free. You slide into a machine and there is an AI running on the cloud which compares your health data with your prior states and also with billions of other records from other human beings and makes the perfect diagnosis. Then it makes the precise cut into your flesh and gives you the perfect amount of anesthesia and inserts the stent and your heart surgery is done. You don't need a radiologist, a general practitioner, a cardiologist etc.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      And if anything goes wrong, we just assume it was unavoidable and not, say, a bug. So bugs don't get found and people die and nobody cares. Just spinning another possible scenario. It could still be a net gain since vastly more people get the care they need.
      - briandear 8y ago
        There are plenty of bugs in normal, human-delivered medicine. Medical errors are a massive source of death and disability in modern medicine.
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
gitgud 8y ago
Dream big, but be realistic. If you set your goal at an unfathomable amount of net worth, then you lose focus on the problem you're trying to solve, and basically set your self up for failure. A good example of this is [1] marshmallow challenge, which is a challenge where you build a tower out of spaghetti and balance a marshmallow on top. The biggest tower wins. The organiser discovered that if he offered a $10,000 prize to the highest structure... No one could build anything, the pressure of a large incentive would overwhelm people and the marshmallow would collapse the hastily designed structure. The lesson is to solve a problem iteratively and not to focus on the reward. This is how large companies like FAMG do it too. Not try to make a multi-billion dollar business from day one. [1] https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/10/19/lessons-innovation-spaghetti-and-marshmallow https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/10/19/lessons-innovation-...

by max76 8y ago

qaq 8y ago

Honestly sounds like a strange goal to have what is special about 100B why not 200 or 50? Is it even meaningful to have a number as a goal?

max76 8y ago
It's important to have an order of magnitude as a goal. In general the size of a company in dollars correlates with their impact on the world. The best talent is interested in making a big impact on the world. 2x or .5x won't make much of a difference, but if you are thinking 100x or 1,000x smaller then it will have an impact on your business in the early stages. If your goal is to make a $100M company you aren't likely thinking big enough to attract good talent and partners.
- yongjik 8y ago
  I don't buy it. Why would the best talent (according to your criterion) join some nobody who aims for $100B, when they can join ~$100B companies and start making impacts right now.
  - max76 8y ago
    The video offers a great example of why a talented engineer would choose to join a startup (1990s Google) versus work in a large established company (Intel). It also turned out to be very beneficial for Paul Buchheit to join Google instead of stay at Intel. There are a lot of talented engineers that prefer working for startups than large corporations. There are not enough talented engineers to staff all of the start ups. It's a competition for companies to attract the best talent.
- qaq 8y ago
  Do you have an example of anyone who built a 100B company who actually had that as a goal ?
  - max76 8y ago
    Google's mission statement: "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful" Microsoft's old mission statement: (Paraphrase) To put a computer on every desk and in every home. Amazon's mission statement: "...build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online" These mission statements don't specifically state they want to build a $100B company, but it seems pretty obvious that a company that does the things in their mission statement would be worth $100B.
    - qaq 8y ago
      Thats a pretty big stretch
    - rokhayakebe 8y ago
      In the case of Google, I am not sure they had a $10 million dollar vision. They tried to sell (unsuccessfully) to Yahoo for $1 Million.
    - throwawayinside 8y ago
      You’re actually correct. There’s a great story about Larry Page telling John Doerr that he thought it could be a $100 Billion company in their first meeting.

dreamdu5t 8y ago

None of the $100B companies started with the goal of being $100B companies...

maxxxxx 8y ago
I think it would a huge distraction to think about billions while you still are struggling with millions. Focus on that goal first and then see where to go from there.

dxhdr 8y ago

> In 10 years there will be a dozen 1 trillion dollar companies. The number of $100B companies is going to explode as well. Devil's advocate, is that actually a good thing? Might be good for the consumer but not great for the laborer. Working for someone else is a bummer. Increasing consolidation means increasingly more of us will be in that position.

jniedrauer 8y ago
> Might be good for the consumer I find this highly unlikely as well.
- redmaverick 8y ago
  Why not? Hypothetical situation: Healthcare/Surgery could be practically free. You slide into a machine and there is an AI running on the cloud which compares your health data with your prior states and also with billions of other records from other human beings and makes the perfect diagnosis. Then it makes the precise cut into your flesh and gives you the perfect amount of anesthesia and inserts the stent and your heart surgery is done. You don't need a radiologist, a general practitioner, a cardiologist etc.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    And if anything goes wrong, we just assume it was unavoidable and not, say, a bug. So bugs don't get found and people die and nobody cares. Just spinning another possible scenario. It could still be a net gain since vastly more people get the care they need.
    - briandear 8y ago
      There are plenty of bugs in normal, human-delivered medicine. Medical errors are a massive source of death and disability in modern medicine.
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago

gitgud 8y ago

Dream big, but be realistic. If you set your goal at an unfathomable amount of net worth, then you lose focus on the problem you're trying to solve, and basically set your self up for failure. A good example of this is [1] marshmallow challenge, which is a challenge where you build a tower out of spaghetti and balance a marshmallow on top. The biggest tower wins. The organiser discovered that if he offered a $10,000 prize to the highest structure... No one could build anything, the pressure of a large incentive would overwhelm people and the marshmallow would collapse the hastily designed structure. The lesson is to solve a problem iteratively and not to focus on the reward. This is how large companies like FAMG do it too. Not try to make a multi-billion dollar business from day one. [1] https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/10/19/lessons-innovation-spaghetti-and-marshmallow https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/10/19/lessons-innovation-...