More jobs and businesses have been created by VCRs than destroyed by them. More jobs and businesses have been created by the breakup of AT&T than destroyed by it. More jobs and businesses have been created by the decline of IBM than lost in Armonk. More jobs and businesses have been created by the stagnation of Microsoft than lost in Redmond. And it will be the same with the RIAA, the MPAA, Intellectual Ventures, and everyone else scheming to enthral the people with digital “rights” management and criminal prosecution of “file sharing.” In the destruction of the monopolization of ideas, lies the seeds of another revolution, one that will bring wealth, freedom, and jobs.

—  Reginald Braithwaite on intellectual property and innovation

3D Printing & The Creative Class

Something interesting happens when the cost of tooling-up falls. There comes a point where your production runs are small enough that the economies of scale that justify container ships from China stop working. There comes a point where making new things isn’t a capital investment but simply a marginal one.

This is profound.  The West can return to manufacturing if it becomes a function of the creative class. This could be a major trend for the next decade.

Source: Why 3-D Printing Isn’t Like Virtual Reality

What the best companies do is provide a very stark idea of what their company is and what it isn’t. We are a company where people are expected to work 18 hour days, and if you dont like that dont come here. Or, we are a company that people are expected to go home at 5 o’clock every day and if you think that would be frustrating, don’t come here. Or we have dogs in the office, or whatever it is.

We have a company that we’ve invested in where the whole company does yoga together. So if you like yoga, this is the company for you. If you don’t like yoga, don’t go there. You are going to be asked to put your feet in positions that your just going to be completely uncomfortable with. Literally, yoga, everyday. The company is called Asana, which of course means a yoga pose… I learned.

So a very very stark idea is very good, because its polarizing. I think the best companies tend to be polarizing. So if in your hiring process you are turning people off as often as you are turning them on, they are sort of deciding “this is not a right fit for me”. I think thats a good thing.

—  Marc Andreessen on hiring

You know when you get old in life things get taken from you. That’s, that’s part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I mean one half step too late or to early you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow or too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in ever break of the game every minute, every second.

—  Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday

At PARC we had a slogan: “Point of view is worth 80 IQ points.” It was based on a few things from the past like how smart you had to be in Roman times to multiply two numbers together; only geniuses did it. We haven’t gotten any smarter, we’ve just changed our representation system. We think better generally by inventing better representations; that’s something that we as computer scientists recognize as one of the main things that we try to do.

— Powerful insight by Alan Kay - Courtesy of Bill Kerr

Demographics and IP laws

In the next 5 - 10 years, politicians will be confronted by a large group of voters who think intellectual property laws, as they stand, are ridiculous.  This demographic is young people who grew up with the Internet.  We break intellectual property laws daily - and i’m not referring to pirating.  We think that restricting the creative uses of content is arcane.  The laws that grant these monopolies are out of touch with how we think.  Laws the conflict with how the majority of the electorate actually behave are eventually reformed.

Today, this demographic is ignorant to what effect intellectual property laws have on them.  Fortunately, that won’t remain true for long.  The owners of this intellectual property are trying to assert their rights.  They are championing laws, such as the Stop Online Piracy Act, that give them unprecedented tools to enforce their will.  Laws that restrict uses of content that young people think are perfectly legitimate.

This demographic is growing up to be a large pool of politically unaffiliated voters.  Politicians will only ignore them for so long.  Catering to this demographic on IP law is politically cheap - no other major electoral group cares much about the topic.

Note: born in 1984, I am part of the early rump of this group.

The thing that is supposed to fail is not your company, its your bad idea!

If you’ve been trying to do something for a while, you start to develop better judgement about what it means, and how it works, and what the rules are. So when something unexpected happens, you’re poised to take advantage of it.

— Eric Ries on This Week In Venture Capital

Your goal is not to get big fast. In fact if getting big could get in the way of learning, it’s a mistake. And there is a tonne of stuff that seems like what could be the harm of getting a little press, winning an industry award, going international, adding an API, or bringing on an enterprise customer.

They all seem fine, until you ask: “Wait a minute. What are we going to learn from this exercise? Is that going to help us build a sustainable business?” Because if the answer is no, you’ve got to say no.

— Eric Ries on This Week In Venture Capital

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