A fellow blogger and owner of a digital production company recently wrote to me in response to my “Think Big” post and said:
I can think big but never got the $$ to make it happen.
It can’t be overstated, the Pursuit of Luck is primarily about ACTION. It’s about acting to change the way you think, acting to change the way you behave and acting to be ready, so that when opportunity strikes from all the changes in thinking and behavior, you can act again to profit from these newly created opportunities.
The problem with the statements like ”I’ve never got the dollars to make it happen”, is that such statements become a hurdle to acting toward your goal and big thinking. Action hurdles must be eliminated.
In March 1998, big thinking Google founders pitched their search product to Alta Vista, no luck. They pitched it to Excite, no luck. They tried a Sand Hill Road venture capitalist but were told VCs are not funding “search”. They pitched their company to Yahoo, and Yahoo took a pass as well.
In The Google Story, author David Vise writes:
The rejections frustrated and upset Larry and Sergey, but also increased their determination”.
By late August 1998, Brin and Page were acting again in attempt to overcome their problem of having no money. This time they were meeting with legendary Silicon Valley investor Any Bechtolsheim on the front porch of the home of one of their graduate professor’s, David Cheriton.
The rest is history. Bechtolsheim, wrote a cheque for $100,000 and this created enough momentum for the Google Guys to raise about $1m to buy the equipment that they needed to take the next critical steps their big thinking project.
Brin and Page could have said “its no use we don’t have the investment”, but instead when one of Page’s advisor’s, Standford professor, Terry Winograd empathized with pages funding predicament, Page said:
Well your going to see. We’ll figure that out”