The single biggest factor that differentiates multi-billion dollar companies is a scalable advantage in customer acquisition costs.
Individual Contributors Make The Best Managers
If you are a great person, why would you want to work for someone whom you can’t learn anything from? The best managers are great individual contributors who never, ever want to be a manager but decide they have to be a manager because no one is going to be able to do as good a job as them.
The Test Of Time
The problem in deciding whether a scientific result or a new “innovation” is a breakthrough, that is, the opposite of noise, is that one needs to see all aspects of the idea—and there is always some opacity that time, and only time, can dissipate.
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile
Being Early
If you want to succeed in the world, you don’t have to be much cleverer than other people. You just have to be one day earlier.
Earthenware and Silver
Enthusiasm
While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster.
Important Things Come As A Big Surprise
People are often asking me what’s going to happen next in science that’s important, and of course, the whole point is that if it’s important, it’s something we didn’t expect. All the really important things come as a big surprise.
Looking Forward
When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, 'Get it away!' and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed. You have to look forward.
Choosing Words Carefully
If words, designations, concepts are not right, judgments are not clear; works do not prosper; punishments do not strike the right man, and the people do not know where to set hand and foot.
Therefore the superior man chooses words that can be employed without doubt, and forms judgments that can be converted into actions without fear of doubt. The superior man tolerates no imprecision in his speech.