4 ms·

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 hin

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 13y ago
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?
- loceng 13y ago
  Zuckerberg was a developer, who was trying to make it big by using ideas and theory that he was hired to implement; He understood that the requiring of a university email address curated for people of a certain demographic. There's usually a misconception between size and importance as well.
  - bluejes 13y ago
    Of course you know that colleges use LISTSERV to this day.
- visakanv 13y ago
  "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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      I have lots of facebook friends without real names.
yegg 13y ago
Thinking big and small are not mutually exclusive and I was trying to suggest doing both well. I agree with you that you should try to solve real problems. However, big thinking is already leaking into your advice with your parenthetical that hopefully affect many people. There is no reason to hope. Instead you can choose an area that you are passionate about, where you can solve real problems AND that is in a big market or could create one (thinking big). I try to answer this in Why you should choose an ambitious startup idea: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/03/why-you-should-choose-an-ambitious-startup-idea.html http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/03/why-you-should-c...
- sitkack 13y ago
  Are you saying focus on root cause solutions rather than side effects? Often a lack of specificity kills a project, the generic solution withers while the targeted one flourishes. I often "think big" but target a specific, ready to pivot to a new specific while retaining the same architecture and philosophy.
- AznHisoka 13y ago
  I agree. Thinking big means "How can I develop a product that will solve a pain for many many people". If you're thinking small, you're by definition trying to solve a small pain for a small audience. Why not try and solve a bigger pain?
  - Jormundir 13y ago
    This thread looks like a confusion of what "thinking big" means. It looks like half of you define it as "think of a problem lots of people have" and the other camp defines it as "think of a big idea" (i.e. "Lets get the human race to mars" or "I'll build a social network for the whole planet to do all of this stuff on). The people who oppose "thinking big" see it as thinking of big problems that require impossible to complete (with a small group, small budget, and reasonable amount of time) solutions. The people who are for "thinking big" seem to be defining it as thinking of problems with solutions that will impact a large amount of people, regardless of the size of the solution required.
  - 13y ago
hershel 13y ago
I agree. If you want to create change, focusing on size is the wrong thing. There are many opportunities to achieve huge change , that don't look like huge money makers. For those of you who are interested in such opportunities, http://www.reddit.com/r/realproblemsolvers http://www.reddit.com/r/realproblemsolvers is a new community for sharing and discussing such problems and solutions. please join and participate and help us create a strong community that will help solve real problems.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

soneca 13y ago

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?

loceng 13y ago
Zuckerberg was a developer, who was trying to make it big by using ideas and theory that he was hired to implement; He understood that the requiring of a university email address curated for people of a certain demographic. There's usually a misconception between size and importance as well.
- bluejes 13y ago
  Of course you know that colleges use LISTSERV to this day.
visakanv 13y ago
"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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    I have lots of facebook friends without real names.

yegg 13y ago

Thinking big and small are not mutually exclusive and I was trying to suggest doing both well. I agree with you that you should try to solve real problems. However, big thinking is already leaking into your advice with your parenthetical that hopefully affect many people. There is no reason to hope. Instead you can choose an area that you are passionate about, where you can solve real problems AND that is in a big market or could create one (thinking big). I try to answer this in Why you should choose an ambitious startup idea: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/03/why-you-should-choose-an-ambitious-startup-idea.html http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/03/why-you-should-c...

sitkack 13y ago
Are you saying focus on root cause solutions rather than side effects? Often a lack of specificity kills a project, the generic solution withers while the targeted one flourishes. I often "think big" but target a specific, ready to pivot to a new specific while retaining the same architecture and philosophy.
AznHisoka 13y ago
I agree. Thinking big means "How can I develop a product that will solve a pain for many many people". If you're thinking small, you're by definition trying to solve a small pain for a small audience. Why not try and solve a bigger pain?
- Jormundir 13y ago
  This thread looks like a confusion of what "thinking big" means. It looks like half of you define it as "think of a problem lots of people have" and the other camp defines it as "think of a big idea" (i.e. "Lets get the human race to mars" or "I'll build a social network for the whole planet to do all of this stuff on). The people who oppose "thinking big" see it as thinking of big problems that require impossible to complete (with a small group, small budget, and reasonable amount of time) solutions. The people who are for "thinking big" seem to be defining it as thinking of problems with solutions that will impact a large amount of people, regardless of the size of the solution required.
- 13y ago

hershel 13y ago

I agree. If you want to create change, focusing on size is the wrong thing. There are many opportunities to achieve huge change , that don't look like huge money makers. For those of you who are interested in such opportunities, http://www.reddit.com/r/realproblemsolvers http://www.reddit.com/r/realproblemsolvers is a new community for sharing and discussing such problems and solutions. please join and participate and help us create a strong community that will help solve real problems.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]