Investment is the noblest activity for an ideal manPosts RSS
Posted in Marketing Thought, Quote on Jun 29th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
Any time you can successfully bring together people who have a reputation or skill with people who sell things, you’re creating value. If you find an appropriate scale, it can become a sustainable, profitable business.
(source)
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"…intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs — in other words, it’s your alternatives that matter. That’s how we make all of our decisions. " (source)
[a smart person scans] the world trying to get his opportunity cost as high as he can so that his individual decisions are better.” (source)
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In the morning I review the newspapers, national and international, and watch the morning news. I pay attention to anything that might have an effect on my many businesses and make mental notes about that. It gets my mind going for what I need to address that day, and gives insight into developing situations that might also affect my businesses in the future. This provides an immediate focus. – Donald Trump (source)
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總有一天，你不會再做你此刻正在做的事。想想此刻你在這個世界所處的一隅，是什麼模樣，再想想看當你離開時，你希望它又會是什麼模樣。
- 唐納.歐基
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BILL GATES JR.: Well, Paul had spotted this computer on a chip, the microprocessor, and we’d been talking about that for several years. And he had encouraged me, hey, let’s start a company, let’s start a company. Well, I was under some pressure to go to school and do — you know, be semi-normal. So he came back to Boston to keep convincing me we should do it. 當年 Paul Allen 比 Bill Gates 更急於創立公司。
…but Meg called Mary and said, gee, I have houseguests at my place on Bainbridge Island, and Warren Buffett and Kay Graham. And I have a weekend ahead, and I wondered if maybe we could come visit you at your place on the water. And we said, sure, that would really be fun. I mean, who would want to pass up the possibility of a day with those two? And the interesting next point, of course, is we called Bill. Actually, Mary called Bill and said, you know, we have this wonderful overnight ahead.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: And he said, “Mother, that’s a Friday. On Friday, we work at Microsoft.” And she persisted a bit as she was prone to do, and he said, OK, OK, I’ll come over for a couple hours in the afternoon. And he came for a couple of hours and he never left. He got so involved in these wonderful conversations with Warren. And you know, to this day, that beginning was an indication of just what a great amount they had in common.
BILL GATES JR.: Oh, it was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. It was July 5th, 1991. I had taken part of Thursday off because that was July 4th, and I was going to work on Friday. There was some important work to get done. But I ceded to my mom’s strong request and then I met Warren, and you know, he and I just started talking. And he asked me questions I had always wanted somebody to ask, you know, which showed a lot of understanding, of, OK, why did IBM do this and why didn’t other computer companies do that? And it just started a conversation that continues to this day about the fascinating world of business. Bill Gates 和 Warren Buffett 第一次見面的經典橋段，相信大家多少都有聽過，這次由 Gates 父子口述這段過往，更添加了真實性。
CHARLIE ROSE: There was I think if my memory serves me, you asked a question about what is the most important quality in a life, and several people said I think — either Warren or you said, focus. And you looked around and the other was shaking his head in affirmation, yes? WILLIAM GATES SR.: That’s right. BILL GATES JR.: Being maniacal about something is very helpful. 不只要專注，而且要到偏執狂 (maniacal) 的境界。
BILL GATES JR.: …So early reading lets you imagine all these situations and start to think of yourself. You know, could I ever run a business? Could I ever discover something in science? And I do think some positive reinforcement — hey you, you’re clever, you can do these things — at a young age takes you a long way, and then — and this is a great time to be a curious person. You know, you go online, get DVD courses. 讀書帶來想像的空間；想像的空間帶來人生更多可能。小時後讀(過)什麼，真的會大大影響到往後的興趣、志向、甚至是整個下半輩子。
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you have a role model in your life beyond your father? BILL GATES JR.: I’d say Warren Buffett as the closest thing I have to a role model. CHARLIE ROSE: Because? BILL GATES JR.: Because of the integrity and thoughtfulness and joy he brings to everything he does. You know, I’m continuing to learn from my dad, I’m continuing to learn from Warren, and many times when I’m making decisions, I try and model how they’d approach a problem. 除了父親，Gates 人生的另一位楷模就是 Warren Buffett。
(source)
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During the 1999 stock bubble, Jeff says he kept telling employees "Don’t feel 30% smarter because the stock is up 30% this month, because you’ll have to feel 30% dumber when it goes down."
"One of the differences between founder/entrepreneurs and financial managers is that founder/entrepreneurs are stubborn about the vision of the business, and keep working the details. The trick to being an entrepreneur is to know when to be stubborn and when to be flexible. The trick for me is to be stubborn about the big things."
"We’ve made many errors. People over-focus on errors of commission. Companies over-emphasize how expensive failure’s going to be. Failure’s not that expensive….The big cost that most companies incur are much harder to notice, and those are errors of Omission.
(source)
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People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn’t fit with what they already know.
- Jessica Livingston
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Because marketers were raised on the scale of mass—TV, radio, newspapers—they have a churn and burn mentality. The internet turns this upside down. The internet is about who, not how many. The internet lets you take really good care of 100 people instead of harassing 2,000.
Yet, panicked marketers still look for scale (How many followers can we get? What can we do with a Facebook fan page?) and then hijack that attention, hoping to filter out the masses and get a few sales.
Scalejacking inevitably tarnishes most communities, because individuals (people) hate being treated like numbers just standing by to be filtered.
On the Internet, the mantra that works is, "Be with the ones you love (and the ones that love you.)" Ignore everyone else. It doesn’t have good internal pentameter, but it’s true.
(source)
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Posted in Management Thought, Microsoft on Jun 15th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
Takeaway: I don’t micromanage, but I do ask questions that require a discussion of detail.
Takeaway: I “budget” my time.
Takeaway: (on hiring) Tell me about your passion and what makes you so proud of. Your passion lies in your eyes which won’t lie.
Takeaway: Delegate decision-making process, and endorse decisions made by your people.
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After this publishing titan pleaded for advice about how to build his own community, Zuckerberg’s reply was, in full: “You can’t.”
Full stop. Hard stare.
He later offered more advice. He told the assembled media moguls that they were asking the wrong question. You don’t start communities, he said. Communities already exist. They’re already doing what they want to do. The question you should ask is how you can help them do that better.
His prescription: Bring them “elegant organization.”
- Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do
…這位媒體大亨懇切尋求如何建立社群的忠告後，薩克柏僅簡短回答一句：「你做不到。」
句號。無情的鄙視。
後來他終於提出更多建言。他告訴在場的媒體群雄，他們問的問題根本就不對。你根本不可能開始一個社群，他說。社群本來就存在，正在做著他們想做的事。你該問的問題是，你如何幫社群做得更好。
他開得處方式：給他門「優雅的組織」。
讓我們仔細咀嚼他所說的話。優雅的組織。仔細想想，這正是薩克柏帶給哈佛和其他大學，以及之後擴及全球的社交平台Facebook所做到的。在薩克柏來到之前，哈佛的社群已存在超過三百年了，薩克柏只是幫助這個社群做得更好…
(source)
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But I very much believe in leaps of faith. Every investment we make, every person we back, every strategy we concoct in partnership with the entrepreneurs we back is a leap of faith.
Wikipedia says that a leap of faith is:
the act of believing in something without, or in spite of, available empirical evidence
- Fred wilson (source)
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So it seems to me that consumers are driven to new experiences that are simple and useful and/or entertaining.
- Fred Wilson (source)
能夠帶來娛樂效果的東西就有機會吸引 (一般) 消費者。人除了有吃喝拉撒睡的需求外，還有渴望被娛樂的需求。
同理可證: 宅男交女朋友 Rule 101: be interesting, bringing entertainment to the girl you like. 而不是修電腦。修電腦完全無法滿足上述五種需求的任何一種 :P。
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Posted in Investment, Microsoft on Jun 7th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
One of the things that is true if you worked at Microsoft, and it’s very stunning for people who come from the outside and come into Microsoft, is that when a company is very, very, very successful, a lot of the challenges that you’re faced with are a direct result of that success. And in Microsoft’s case we have had the ability to say yes and add more over the years in terms of solving more problems for customers, creating more offerings, and it’s really great from an opportunity perspective, because you address more and more of the market. But as a side effect of that you create internal complexity that you really don’t understand until there’s a forcing function that makes you understand it.
- Ray Ozzie (source)
當一間公司相當成功後，接踵而來的挑戰，往往是過去的成功所堆積的包袱…
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說道的人多，悟道的人少。 知道 的人多，行道的人少。
- 達摩大師傳
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抱持著懷疑心態看待更年輕的世代，也是人類的本性。無論是聖奧古斯汀、亞里斯多德、荷馬、甚至是古亞述人，都曾在他們所屬的世代，譴責年輕人不夠尊重長者、生性懶惰，責備他們任性不守規矩，表現得不像是 [在美好往日裡] 的人。
- 唐納．基歐
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I don’t know how you think about this. But as a heavy reader on-the-go, I always dream of a way to read the full article of a “partial” RSS feed while being offline (e.g. most news feeds). Any reader/plug-in that could achieve this would be great. It might affect the publishers’ potential ad profitability in short term. But I believe the advertising model will transform itself as suitable to the decentralized content distribution model, eventually.
More innovations on this field are needed.
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