[hermaj]

'I dreamt of building something that would shake things up and improve the web.'

A serious question from an outsider - is this something people really believe or is it a platitude?

I seem to see this statement often since I started reading HN. On the other hand success seems to be measured in selling companies for large sums of money and moving on to something else. Does this really improve the web?

[sageikosa]

There are a large number of individuals whose inflated self-image needs an objective reality check...

Thinking that one can do anything is good self-motivation, but one shouldn't deny the evidence that "anything" and "everything" are not the same concept, nor that one's particular "anything" may be neither simple nor valuable.