> You can have a product built by a single person in PHP and if it catches itself in the wind it will become a multi-billion dollar entity.

I think this is both true, and doesn't really convey the whole story of what's needed. If it catches in the wind it can be successful and make some money, maybe a few million if you're extremely lucky.

To make tens of millions, you have to be lucky and aggressive, otherwise someone will copy your idea and add the aggression themselves.

To make it to billions, you need the luck, you need the aggression, and you need an extra level of luck to be at the right place at the right time to capitalize on a major change.

Facebook did it with social media. Myspace and Friendster were around too, but Facebook provided a clean interface and hit critical mass sooner.

Apple did it with the smart phone. They weren't first, but their product was better enough to distinguish itself when smart phones started really being worthwhile for the average user (while already a low billion dollar company, they jumped an order of magnitude with the iPhone).

Google did it with the search engine. They weren't the first, but they were enough better a the time that internet usage was really taking off that it catapulted them into a position of leadership in search engines, and internet starting pages.

Microsoft did it with operating systems, and was able to ride the wave of computer ownership and business needs to dominance.

In each case, I think it wasn't just the product, but also the time being just right that caused the success. In each case there were competing products prior to the market leader that weren't that technically inferior, and in some cases might have had some superior features. In each case, it's not just the timing that matter, but also that they aggressively capitalized on their fortune to expand and entrench.

When I was that age (I'm actually the same age as him) I would have been "strong on the cringe too"

It boggles my mind how many people try to replicate Mark Zuckerberg by dropping out of college, or wearing the same thing every day, or [insert cargo cult trend of the year here]. But everyone sits around writing business plans and designing logos and hiring freelancers without actually having a product yet.