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Comment by NEPatriot | Hacker News Reader

I don't think so. Their stated objective is to change the world's social networking platform. Not start a lifestyle business or pet project. If they had gone into it with a hobbyist's approach 170,000 users is success.

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So then success is tied to intention? What if John Doe did a bootstrap startup with the intention to become the next Bezos, but instead ended up making $500k a year? I'd still call that a success.

What if it ended up that Diaspora managed to gain enough users and convert enough of Facebook's user base to gain about 17.5% market share? (Measured in time online, on-site. Probably hard to measure, but this is a hypothetical.) Would they be a success? What percentage would represent the threshold?

In your example, I think you would consider it a success, but perhaps John Doe would not, in that he didn't fulfill his goal. If he did consider it a success, then I'd say that's due in large part to the fact that he must have revised his goal somewhere along the way.

Based on that, I would say success is 1) different things to different people, and 2) the fulfillment of each person's goals.

Success is tied to internal driving/motivating factors. Julius Caesar wept in front of a statue of Alexander the Great because at his age (30) Alexander had conquered the known world. He compared himself to Alexander and tried to live up to that standard. Likewise if John Doe truly wants to be the next Bezos 500k/yr isn't enough. The comment above supposes 170k users, not 17.5% of 500 million users.

If the original goal must be achieved for an endeavor to be successful, I guess Columbus's trip to India failed miserably.

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