Achieving a failure

Personally I've always worked on smaller things. I've never had an interest in being a cog in a giant machine. As a result I've always had the luxury of an agile team and rapid feedback cycles.

When it comes to startups, sure I want mine to be huge... but the way I see it, most huge companies were small companies once (maybe I'm wrong). Given the odds of creating a $500,000, $5,000,000 or $50,000,000 company, doesn't it make sense to aim for early success and use real revenues as a launchpad to the next level, and just sell the company if the potential ends up not being there?

I know some ideas are either huge or nothing (eg. electric cars), but I don't think most web startups fall into that category. Being the next Google is sure appealing, but can it be manufactured? Where does aiming high hit diminishing returns?