There was no reason not to believe the opposite either.
I think I have a problem with your use of the word 'unfair'. Unfair to me means 'cheating', 'foul play'.
Having first spent the required time to create a video service put them in the position to realize that there was another trend brewing and they capitalized on that.
It's a classic pivot into a niche that was unproven, it could have been worth absolutely nothing (and it looked for quite a while that it wasn't going to be worth anything, even long after they already bet the company on it). At least, that's what it looked like to me from the outside. I was more than happy to be rid of the gamers.
> It never occurred to me that it could be a business, let alone a $300B one, because at the time I thought that software companies were things that sold high-performance databases to Fortune 500 companies for real money.
Well, that's just sour grapes. And I'm pretty sure that Mark Zuckerberg is just as surprised as you are at the $300B. That you failed to capitalize on the same opportunity as someone else because they realized something that you did not has very little to do with Mark Zuckerberg being a college sophomore at an elite institution, and even less with a music player, it has everything to do with recognizing an opportunity when one comes along (and whether he acted fairly towards others in that same project or not is not the subject).
If you want to argue 'unfair advantage' you will have to shift your viewpoint to the third world.
Notice how I could have written that Justin had an unfair advantage over our team because he was in Silicon Valley and we were not. But I did not write that because I know that it wouldn't have made a shred of a difference. What matters is that he took the chance and we did not.
> What other unfair advantages do Hacker News readers have that they don't realize are advantages?
Hacker News Readers' advantages are: a great channel to communicate with like minded individuals, access to some of the smartest people that I know, a collective experience that dwarfs even that of the most seasoned individuals in the industry, access to capital, access to YC if you want it and you pass muster, in general a good or even excellent education, not to have to worry about what they're going to eat tomorrow (well, probably not everybody, but most of us anyway) and so on. In short, all the privileges that we as an industry (the IT industry) take for granted and that other people have to fight for.
But between us there is no 'unfair advantage', you're looking at a minute difference between two sets of individuals already from one of the most privileged groups on the planet.