It's important to have an order of magnitude as a goal. In general the size of a company in dollars correlates with their impact on the world. The best talent is interested in making a big impact on the world.
2x or .5x won't make much of a difference, but if you are thinking 100x or 1,000x smaller then it will have an impact on your business in the early stages. If your goal is to make a $100M company you aren't likely thinking big enough to attract good talent and partners.
I don't buy it. Why would the best talent (according to your criterion) join some nobody who aims for $100B, when they can join ~$100B companies and start making impacts right now.
The video offers a great example of why a talented engineer would choose to join a startup (1990s Google) versus work in a large established company (Intel). It also turned out to be very beneficial for Paul Buchheit to join Google instead of stay at Intel.
There are a lot of talented engineers that prefer working for startups than large corporations. There are not enough talented engineers to staff all of the start ups. It's a competition for companies to attract the best talent.
Google's mission statement: "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful"
Microsoft's old mission statement: (Paraphrase) To put a computer on every desk and in every home.
Amazon's mission statement: "...build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online"
These mission statements don't specifically state they want to build a $100B company, but it seems pretty obvious that a company that does the things in their mission statement would be worth $100B.
You’re actually correct. There’s a great story about Larry Page telling John Doerr that he thought it could be a $100 Billion company in their first meeting.
