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"Make people want something that is actually junk." doesn't have quite the same ring to it, nor does it sound remotely more plausible.

Presumably the 10% weekly growth that YC and PG advocate as the default growth metric isn't expected to be in the absence of sales but the contrary, sales plus anything that works that is ethical and not some ponzi scheme.

He provided examples via the link to http://paulgraham.com/ds.html where he describes stripe founders engaging in zealous activities many would call sales despite being the type of startup that could have leaned back and had ample demand.


> "Make people want something that is actually junk." doesn't have quite the same ring to it, nor does it sound remotely more plausible.

It certainly doesn't have the same ring to it, but it's an extremely successful business model.


I skimmed that essay. Zealous activities to make existing users happy seemed to be the emphasis. It's possible that there were zealous activities for acquiring users mentioned somewhere, but I missed them because they were less emphasized.


Did I miss the attribution to Alan Watts for the prickles and goo metaphor? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXi_ldNRNtM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts


I (kind of) missed it. He mentions Alan elsewhere on his site. http://www.meltingasphalt.com/prickles-and-goo/


This seems wrong from an engineering AND MBA point of view. As designing and manufacturing electronics becomes more automated, the workflow for designing computer hardware will be very similar to software development (it pretty much already is).

From an MBA perspective, Apple just owns more of the value chain in software, i.e. some of the silicon via the mobile processors, and the proprietary cases. Other than that, most of the hardware follows pretty closely with the industry standard tech [intel's roadmap]. They don't seem excessively tied up at all.


You could just as well say that your dollar lost 10% against bitcoin in a day, who would dare buy something with a dollar with it fluctuating so much so often.


Except my rent and my paycheck are fluctuating 10% in bitcoin, and 0% in dollars.


Because with dollars I can go and buy a loaf of bread today and a loaf of bread tomorrow, and be assured that it'll still be the same price.


In that scenario, you'd want to spend as many dollars as you have since you think they're going to rapidly depreciate in value.


Does everyone forget that the U.S. government brought an antitrust case against Microsoft and nearly broke them up? That experience certainly cooled them off a bit.

They've slowly aligned themselves in the background with Facebook, Yahoo, and even Apple against Google. They just inked another licensing deal with Foxconn for use of Android and Chrome OS of all things.


It was really the exact opposite of that. The thesis was exactly that, it's all about the content, so get the best content creators in the world. It turned out to be all about the medium, and there are still only a few people who know what do in the medium of online video.


Maybe I read it wrong, but to me it sounded like: we got the best content creators, but they only could make beautiful content. All the amateurs were creating the best content.


This failed as an experiment in the same way mythbusters gets Adam to scale a building, and he can't get to a second floor with suction cups, and deems it a myth. All the while we have a french guy that is scaling skyscrapers with only his hands and getting arrested for that the very same weekend.


It would be great if they can be successful at making a company where you can be confident that your data will not die; but flexible enough for the inevitable sampling of future 'bloggish' platforms that come out.


Part of being a good communicator is being relatable. This worked so well with Steve because his results spoke for themselves. The is the important detail for anyone who wants to emulate his style. He was given the privilege of communicating like a visionary because of the results he achieved, not the other way around.


Someone can probably build an app player for android apps, but architecture wise, what you just described sounds kind of like a custom UI for android.

The rationale for not doing something like this philosophically is that the underlying point of webos is that it shouldn't feel like a 'whole new platform' to a web developer, but rather the platform they are already most familiar with, even more than android, i.e the web.


Given the way Google implemented gathering street view data, I wouldn't be surprised if Google has more map data in the USA than all the other map companies combined.


It's hilarious how many people fell for Google's PR efforts.

Street View is great for finding faults in existing data but the fact is that it is the same old mapping/directory companies that do most of the work.


> the same old mapping/directory companies that do most of the work

In that case, wouldn't it be mentioned in the copyright at the bottom right corner of maps.google.com when looking at US maps? I only see "Map Data (c) 2012 Google".

The Atlantic article mentions that they started with the TIGER data, not something from a mapping company.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-go...


Wrong: Since 2009, at least in US, TeleAtlas was replaced by data from Google Street View. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2009/10/12/google-replaces-tele-...

Business listing comes from "information from our web search results, data submitted directly by local business owners, and third-party sources such as publicly available Yellow Pages directories" https://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...

It's hilarious how quick you can accuse someone without even having some sources to back it up.


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