I think that is a little simplistic, the main thing that got Linux going was sustained and continued effort. If this first message had been a flop Linus would likely have continued working and pushing it through. It was almost a decade before Linux could be considered a "real" operating system ready for production.
The bulk of the .com era was still on SUN and commercial Unicies. Linux was still in its early adopter phase. It was only in the 2000s that it started to get widespread adoption.
