In early 1996, a question by a person named Lawrence appeared on comp.lang.java, a Usenet forum devoted to the Java language. The boy had a technical question and asked for help. Then he signed: “Thanks, Larry Page”.

Lawrence turned out to be the co-founder of Google, and other great entrepreneurs like him and living legends of technology have taken to the internet to seek help or simply share ideas about the future. Linus Torvalds, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg Or Brian Armstrong did. The rest, as they say, is history.

Even the big ones were once small

Frankly, not many people knew who Larry Page was or that his project (which he developed with Sergey Brin) would eventually achieve great success. one of the greatest tech empires of all time.

Larry Page asked in the forums because of course Google didn’t exist yet. He would be interested in creating it.

As noted in this discussion initiated by Paul McKellar from twitter, he was not alone those who want help or ideas when starting their project and getting it up and running.

we have One of the most famous cases of Linus TorvaldsThe creator of Linus, who wrote to comp.os.minix (another Usenet forum) on August 25, 1991, also became historical:

Here Linus Torvalds talked about how he created an operating system as a hobby. “It’s not going to be big and professional,” he said. Ha.

Another legendary message Posted by Jeff Bezos on the ba.jobs.offered forum (also on Usenet, the Reddit of the time). In it, Bezos was looking for “highly talented” programmers to help him “pioneers in internet business.”

Just send your resume and cover letter to Jeff Bezos, who even left the company’s mailing address. By the way: at that time it was called Cadabra, not Amazon.

These stories show how business builders of all kinds seek help and input like everyone else. Of course, these are not the only cases and Interesting to remember how Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook’s predecessor FaceMash.

That controversial website for Harvard University students let you vote on whether a girl on campus is attractive. This caused the Harvard board of directors to send him to a third degree, from which he emerged unharmed, which would lead to the creation of his social network Facebook.

At the time, Zuckerberg’s blog was on the Live Journal platform, and although these posts disappeared, someone rescued and published them. In them you can see how the creator of Facebook told how he created FaceMash on the night of October 28-29, 2003 because “I need something to occupy my mind“.

Many share their ideas online before launching to seek validation and recommendations. Someone who recently said Brian Armstrong in 2012 He posted a message to Hacker News commenting on his idea and seeking a co-founder for his project.

This was Brian Armstrong’s message in March 2012. Most of the respondents were critical of his idea. Who laughs last…

Despite the criticism it received, Armstrong finally turned this idea into reality.. Its aim was to propose a way to facilitate transactions with “digital currencies such as bitcoin or a derivative thereof”.

He believed in the future of cryptocurrencies: he founded Coinbase and went public a few weeks ago. Today he is a multimillionaire and he also gave important reflection as he told the story of the beginnings: “I knew I didn’t have to take negative feedback too seriously.“.