Because anybody can see what's happening now, but to make money you need to do the next thing -- and by definition, nobody is doing it yet. So you have to take

Because anybody can see what's happening now, but to make money you need to do the next thing -- and by definition, nobody is doing it yet. So you have to take the leap and decide, that of the hundreds of directions the web could go, it's going to go this way. If it goes your way, then in retrospect, everyone will look at what you did and say "well, all the signs were there, it was obvious this was going to be big". But the 99 other guys who invested in, say, Coldfusion, or Shockwave, or Push screensavers, will be broke or stuck in permanent backwaters. To be the Next Big Thing, you have to risk the 99% probability of being Yet Another Small Thing.