Paul Graham explains why you shouldn’t try to be a visionary

Empirically, the way to do really big things seem to be to start with small things and grow them bigger. Want to dominate microcomputer software for decades? Start by writing a basic interpreter for a machine with a couple thousand users. Want to make the universal website a giant vacuum for people's time? Start by building a website where Harvard undergrads can stalk one another. Neither Bill Gates nor Mark Zuckerberg knew how big their content companies were going to get. All they knew was that they were onto something. Maybe it's a bad idea to have really big ambitions initially, because the bigger your ambitions, the longer they're going to take to realize, and the longer you're projecting into the future, the more likely you're going to be wrong. So I think the best way to do these big ideas is not to try and identify a precise point in the future and say, how do I get from here to there? Like the popular image of a visionary. I think a better model is Columbus, who thought, there's something to the west. I'll sail westward. Start with something that works, that, you know, works, that's small, and then when the opportunity comes to move, move westward. Right. The popular image of the visionary is someone with a very, very precise view of the future. But empirically, it's probably better to have a blurry one.