I have been following some figures, startups, companies, businesses before they become big or famous  like today, I notice that all of them always started from small.

Great things almost always start from small. I bet that most of us know about these following successful entrepreneurs such as Jack Ma, Richard Branson, Bill gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg,  etc.

Richard Branson started the Virgin brand with a student magazine, Steve Jobs started Apple in the garage, Mark started Facebook from his Hardvard’s dorm and before the giant social media platform called Facebook was formed, he created social network that allowed its users to make class selection decisions based on the choices of other students and also to help them form study groups. A short time later, he created a different program he initially called Facemash that let students select the best looking person from a choice of photos. Before Alibaba was created, Jack Ma used to be an English teacher as his starting career, got rejected many times even for casual jobs like in KFC, he then started a translation company to capitalize on China’s export boom. Later he  found China Pages, a directory of various Chinese companies looking for customers abroad, and some say, the country’s first internet business.  China Pages was a flop. But four years later, Ma took another stab at an internet business. He called his second company Alibaba.

They are just some of many examples which shows us that every great things done by great people almost or even are always started from small

There’s an interesting comment I read on Ycombinator ( Capital Venture / Seed Accelerator ) news site written by Paul Graham saying :

“Don’t even try to build startups. That’s premature optimization. Just build things that seem interesting. The average undergraduate hacker is more likely to discover good startup ideas that way than by making a conscious effort to work on projects that are supposed to be startups.”

START EVERYTHING WITH MVP ( Minimum Viable Product )

I like the idea by Eric Ries about this concept with MVP.  Let’s take a look at an example of it, when historical successes like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, published in 1936, it was started as just a short talk and a few notes on a small piece of card. That was the MVP, and it was a perfect way to start. And if the content in this smaller form hadn’t resonated with people, my guess is that the book wouldn’t even exist today.

This is also what I am trying to do with this blog, I have a dream that one day I would like to write and publish a book or even a couple of books, yet I always think that I have no time or I keep myself busy all the time, I want to write book in English but I always have doubt in myself that my English is not perfect since I am not a native English speaker and not born or never live in an English speaking country, all the fears that actually are created by me, those things that always keep holding me back.

I believe that we could and should start to think about everything beginning as an MVP, starting much smaller than we might currently think about it. This post is just even started from my sudden thought about what I want to do in my life and about what sort of great thing I want to create for the future and even sometimes I am thinking about what I can  do to make the world as a better place.

Have you thought about achieving success and changing the world ? if yes, maybe you can start from changing your unproductive routine to be productive. Start the small beginning in what good things you can do today.