Just come across the tweets from Marcelino Pantoja. Feel something with the followings. One is that Steve Jobs on building a real company. The other is that Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman on competition.
The difficult thing to start a business is what to build, what is the feature of a product you really want but can’t find. But that’s not enough. How can you expand your product into a platform with that particular product. It may start with a niche product. In the end, it may be a platform with your products that everyone uses. If you have a right product, sooner or later you will move to the top. If your product is right, there is no competitons that could win from you. Your products will conquer your competitions. Just remember this: to win a war without fighting is the art. Put out your products there to break the will of others to fight.
So few real company builders.
Steve Jobs on building a real company: I hate it when people call themselves “entrepreneurs” when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business. That’s how you really make a contribution and add to the legacy of those who went before. You build a company that will stand for something a generation or two from now. That’s what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That’s what I want Apple to be.
Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman on competition:
Patrick:
Not all analogies are perfect. They’ll often fall down. I’m curious to hear where you think the analogy of business as war falls down. I’m thinking of the Highlander analogy I’ve seen you put out there, which I absolutely love. I’d love you to tell people that one, because I think it’s a good example of compounding benefits to the market leader. So maybe mention that, what you mean by Highlander as a concept, and what the limits are to this concept of business as war, if any.
Frank:
Government can print money, and they do plenty of it. The rest of us, we have to take it from somebody else. And once you come to that realization, you also find out that they’re not going to take kindly to the fact that you’re taking this from them. So, and the bigger you get, now you become a looming threat and they’ll fight back with everything they have. It does feel like war, and not war in the sense that people are going to die, but companies are going to die. Companies are dying every day. Then they don’t reach viability. And then a lot of old ones that were successful, ones that are basically decaying on the vine, I mean, how many of those do we have out there?
It is a very visceral battle, but the way you know you’re winning, first of all, you need to define what winning is. I’ve always quoted US Grant and other people. They defined victory as breaking the enemy’s will to fight. It was not just kill them. It was breaking their will to fight. You can do that in a number of ways. But in a world of software, you break the enemy’s will to fight when you are hiring their people because they have given up. They’d rather be with you than they are with the other company, because it’s too hard and too painful and they’re not making money. So, “I’m going to join the winner instead of stick with delusion.” That happens in our world all the time. That is the Highlander analogy because every time the Highlander kills another Highlander, he takes on the strength of the other Highlander. The same thing is true in software. If I’m hiring a top salesperson, top engineer from another company, I’ve taken their strength now into my organization. It’s not just that I gained theirs, but they lose theirs. So it’s a double impact. I weakened them and I strengthened myself.