<p><pre><code>    &gt; You don&#x27;t build a business by setting out to be Facebook.
    &gt; You build a business by setting out to create thefacebook for universities.
</code></pre>
Paul Graham is the only person in the world who can get away with spreading this, please don&#x27;t repeat after him.<p>In practice, the difference between building a billion dollar company and building a 10 million dollar company is marginal. You still need to constantly raise money, you will ruin your culture and so on; everything that OP describes as awful downsides of SV mentality is just as present. The author seems to hint towards bootsrapping (&quot;figure out how to earn your first dollar&quot;, etc), but examples that he gives, with the exception of 37Signals are just smaller and less successful versions of Facebook with all downsides included.