He had the resource of being in the right place at the right time (i.e., market opportunity). Facebook did not exist at the time, and the social media market, which a college student could disrupt, wasn't saturated. What would he have started today? We can look at Airbnb or Uber as this decade's runaway success, but neither of those could have been started by a solo college student. Don't underestimate the power of luck in determining startup winners and losers.