Google started as a research project called BackRub. It only turned into Google and a mission after it started taking too much bandwidth on Stanford's servers
Source: https://inshorts.com/en/news/google-began-as-a-research-proj...
#AIRBNB
Airbnb began just so that the founders could make some extra money to pay rent. Not to disrupt an industry.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-airbnb-was-founded-a-vis...
#STRIPE
Stripe was just a small project so the founders could simplify getting paid for their other side projects.
Source: https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-collison-brothers-and-...
"calling it a "web crawler" designed to roam the web. "
I'm right.
# STRIPE "At the time Patrick was working on several side projects and they debated why it was so difficult to accept payments on the web. They sought to solve the problem and see if it was possible to make it simple - really simple. "
I'm right.
# AIRBNB
I'm wrong.
The first two set out to do something huge.
Why would you feel this is necessary?
(edit: I see you edited it away, but I still feel like it’s worth calling out.)
Google set out to catalog the entire internet on day one. If that's not a grand vision that they spent billions on, what is?
AirBNB set out to disrupt the entire vacation rental market.
Stripe set out to disrupt the entire POS payment market.
Apple is the only one who fits your narrative: they set out to make a hobby PC then Jobs wanted to ... oh right, disrupt the entire PC market with Mac, but that came 7 years later so OK.