All you really need to create something that will take down a beast is a talented entrepreneur, a smart guy or two on your team, and enough horsepower to keep your stake in the competition alive.
What I’m talking about, specifically, is taking a competitor, someone the size of Facebook or IMDB, down to their knees by providing more privacy and more ability to interact with their friends in innovative ways. When I mean a smart guy or two, or more specifically in my case, are people who know how to control highly dynamic and efficient database manageability, as well as another server optomization guy. With the skills that I have as a PHP developer and service builder, a team like that could easily, given the space for rapid growth early on (server bandwidth, processing power, storage), one could take on a giant like Facebook within months.
The only problem that is in my way at this moment is the lack of ability to devote my entire attention to such a project, as I’m focusing on building up income again. I wonder, however, if I were born into a family with tremendous wealth, would I have the ability, nay the desire to go after something like this? I wouldn’t think so, and for that I am the most thankful. I am able to prove myself when some cannot. Since I’ve been given the ability to do such a thing, I believe I’m going to chase it as hard as possible.
In the mean time, for inspiration on my goal, I’ve been reading an eBook that I purchased a few days ago, called Inside Facebook. The story is about the first senior engineer to land into the then tiny Thefacebook, watch it prosper to over many, many millions of pageviews a day, who he runs into in the process, and suggestions for things to take into account when starting your own startup. Very inspirational for someone in my shoes. I would’ve died to work there when he did and to watch something explode wildly with popularity. I haven’t gotten to the part as to why he eventually left within little over a year, if that even is in the book. I’m about 25 pages in and I’m already throughly enjoying it. I’d recommend it to anyone looking to start any kind of large goal such as Facebook or the like, or if you’d just like to hear what it’s like to work in the starting stages of a prosperous company.
Anyway, back to my original statement regarding taking them down within a few months. I absolutely know something like that couldn’t realistically happen within a few months, but that’s always been in the back of my mind. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that I have most of the skills available to take on such a challenge and at least present a viable candidate to take on a big guy.