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by tim333 3741 days ago
>Google began in March 1995 as a research project

>Some Rough Statistics (from August 29th, 1996) Total indexable HTML urls: 75.2306 Million Total content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes

>The first funding for Google as a company was secured in August 1998 in the form of a US$100,000 contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim

>

>In January 2004, Mark Zuckerberg began writing the code for a new website, known as 'theFacebook'.

> Within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service.

>In the summer of 2004, venture capitalist Peter Thiel made a $500,000 angel investment

>

So both were up and running before getting investment. And not massive amounts to begin with. I do kind of disagree with Taleb's point:

>What is needed? 1) .... and above all, 5) risk loving

Neither Page nor Zuckerberg took much risk. If their projects failed business wise they just would have ended up with a PhD from Stanford and a degree from Harvard respectively. What they had that was needed was enthusiasm for building cool stuff.