Nothing wrong with setting out to build a Google instead of a Basecamp. They’re different kinds of company.
If anything it’s easy to underestimate the risk of building a low-risk business. They’re all hard.
Kudos to Konfig!
Sure there is. The probability of success is as good as zero. In all seriousness, a better business model is buying $1000 a month in lottery tickets. You have the same chance of success, you can do it on the side while working your job, and if you do hit the jackpot you don't have to do any additional work. This particular business has no path to being a Google but it might have a shot at being a Basecamp.
Even the Marxist analysis would say it’s about privilege, access, and exploitation. Not “probability”.
Considering well connected people with startup know-how and experience in the Bay Area, I would say they do pretty well with serious startup projects.
No, but that's how anyone should think about startups that are "Google or nothing". Not even Google started that way.
- right product?
- right market segment?
- right marketing?
- right execution?
- right scalability post basic execution?
- right sales approach?
- right post sales approach?
All of these have 10 different paths (in reality), any of which if you take the wrong one could end up in some kind of expensive dead end or spectacular failure.
The reality is that you measure and get information on all of these things to determine more accurately what odds you have. The act of measurement changes the probabilities, because if you do it right you will know more than you did before.
In theory all these things are controllable and no problem is unsolvable. Sometimes it’s even true (post-facto however, more often than not). That view is often the best for succeeding (or more precisely, NOT having that view often puts one at a disadvantage when it comes to succeeding).
But the probabilities are often the more accurate model. That is often the best model for deciding if you want to take a bet, or for comforting yourself later if it doesn’t actually work out perfectly. It really doesn’t help though (most of the time) with actually doing successfully.