More money is rarely the answer to innovation. The best innovations come from a world of scarce resources.
John Donahoe (via brycedotvc)
Quotes
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“I can’t recall many instances when I was mayor where an issue was so crucial that my staff had to awaken me in the middle of the night,” he told me. “I hired very competent managers who knew I expected them to work hard. They knew they couldn’t be afraid to make a decision. Sometimes the decisions were right, and sometimes there should have been a different approach. The important thing is that the decision was made.”
Richard Daley, former Mayor of NYC
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When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
Paulo Coelho (via kickstarter)
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Every employee in a company depends on the CEO to make fast, high quality decisions. Often any decision, even the wrong decision, is better than no decision. These decisions are pulse of the organization. Sharing command almost guarantees that the CEO position will perform poorly in this dimension.
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Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.
C.S. Lewis (via psych-facts)
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If you generate cash, investors mean nothing. If you do not, then your success will depend upon the kindness of strangers.
the always awesome Ben Horowitz
Capital market climate change – Term Sheet
(via fred-wilson)
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That’s particularly the case when you factor in Foursquare’s API which is also used by Path, Instagram, Uber, Evernote, Garmin, Vine, Magellan, and – you guessed it! – Waze.
Is Waze overvalued or is Foursquare undervalued? | PandoDaily (via fred-wilson)
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It is not about building a smoother version of what already exists in the market. That is a transient advantage as existing companies adopt technology. If you want to build something big and lasting you have use the internet/mobile to do something that simply was not possible before.
Continuations: Reminder: Net Native Means Previously Impossible (via nickgrossman)
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A true marketplace needs natural pull on both the consumer and supplier side of the market.
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It turns out that the average rake at Priceline Group is even higher today, as they allow merchants to voluntarily bid up their rake for better placement in the network (you can see this in the table above). This is one of my favorite marketplace business model “tweaks.” You start with a low rake to get broad-based supplier adoption, and you add in a market-driven pricing dynamic that allows those suppliers who want more volume or exposure to pay more on an opt-in basis. This way no one leaves the network due to excessive fees, yet you end up with a higher average rake over time due to the competitive dynamic. And when prices go up due to bidding and competition, the suppliers blame their competition not the platform (part of the genius of the Google AdWords business model). This also allows you to extract more dollars from those suppliers who desire to spend more to promote themselves (without raising the tax on those that don’t).