a penniless immigrant imagining a business revolution. It’s about
bold ideas that might threaten your comfort zones but simultaneously
reflect your greatest opportunities. Believing in big frees you to ask
different questions, follow different paths, and try new things. This
opens the doors to possibilities that until now only lived inside you.
Sabeer Bhatia arrived in America with only $250 in his pocket,
but he wasn’t alone. Sabeer came with big plans and the belief that he
could grow a business faster than any business in history. And he did.
He created Hotmail. Microsoft, a witness to Hotmail’s meteoric rise,
eventually bought it for $400 million.
According to his mentor, Farouk Arjani, Sabeer’s success was
directly related to his ability to think big. “What set Sabeer apart
from the hundreds of entrepreneurs I’ve met is the gargantuan size of
his dream. Even before he had a product, before he had any money
behind him, he was completely convinced that he was going to build a
major company that would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
He had an unrelenting conviction that he was not just going to build a
run-of-the-mill Silicon Valley company. But over time I realized, by
golly, he was probably going to pull it off.”
As of 2011, Hotmail ranked as one of the most successful
webmail service providers in the world, with more than 360 million
active users.
GOING BIG
Thinking big is essential to extraordinary results. Success requires
action, and action requires thought. But here’s the catch—the only
actions that become springboards to succeeding big are those
informed by big thinking to begin with. Make this connection, and the
importance of how big you think begins to sink in.