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The Only Way to Grow Huge

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: The Only Way to Grow Huge

#41

Post by pdog »

pg wrote: post #36

Note to Sam: It's possible to anticipate ways HN readers will misunderstand you, and tweak what you write to pre-empt them. It takes some practice, but I'd guess I'm now able to do it maybe 3/4 of the time. In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size…

Even Microsoft (presented as a possible counterexample) had a great relationship with developers in the early years that sustained its incredible growth.

Re: The Only Way to Grow Huge

#42

Post by adwf »

pg wrote: post #36

Note to Sam: It's possible to anticipate ways HN readers will misunderstand you, and tweak what you write to pre-empt them. It takes some practice, but I'd guess I'm now able to do it maybe 3/4 of the time. In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size…

Now put it in an algorithm that detects any mention of "only, always, never" or any other absolute. Then insert a boilerplate at the top of such discussions, saying there are always exceptions, but the gist of the argument is still valid ;)

Re: The Only Way to Grow Huge

#43

Post by [deleted] »

adwf wrote: post #42
pg wrote: post #36

Note to Sam: It's possible to anticipate ways HN readers will misunderstand you, and tweak what you write to pre-empt them. It takes some practice, but I'd guess I'm now able to do it maybe 3/4 of the time. In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size…

Now put it in an algorithm that detects any mention of "only, always, never" or any other absolute. Then insert a boilerplate at the top of such discussions, saying there are always exceptions, but the gist of the argument is still valid ;)

[deleted]

Re: The Only Way to Grow Huge

#44

Post by JacobJans »

This reminds me of an article I recently read in the Harvard Business review.

"The Three Rules for Making a Company Great."

The three rules are basically:

1. Increase Revenue

2. Increase Quality.

3. Only rules 1 and 2 matter.

I've following these rules since I read about them, and I do think they are very, very, helpful. Even though we grow mostly through direct response marketing, our brand value has been increasing, as has readership loyalty and revenue per unique subscriber. We are starting to get to the point where we're producing the type of quality that nobody else produces, anywhere. This easily solves one of the biggest marketing questions: What is your unique position? Eventually, the answer will be simple: We're simply better than all of our competitors. By a lot.

http://hbr.org/2013/04/three-rules-for-making-a-company-trul...

Re: The Only Way to Grow Huge

#45

Post by jacques_chester »

adwf wrote: post #42
pg wrote: post #36

Note to Sam: It's possible to anticipate ways HN readers will misunderstand you, and tweak what you write to pre-empt them. It takes some practice, but I'd guess I'm now able to do it maybe 3/4 of the time. In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size…

Now put it in an algorithm that detects any mention of "only, always, never" or any other absolute. Then insert a boilerplate at the top of such discussions, saying there are always exceptions, but the gist of the argument is still valid ;)

I can't help but feel that if fuzzy logic was taught more widely in computer science courses, people would be more sanguine about "only, always, never" as linguistic qualifiers.

... not that I am without guilt on this ...

Re: The Only Way to Grow Huge

#46

Post by jacques_chester »

pak wrote: post #4

> All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people. This is a bad opening premise. Time Warner and Comcast are huge and they don't seem like word of mouth companies to me. Boeing is pretty huge and they don't sell anything directly to ordinary consumers. I would never run around marketing Pfizer products to my friends. Take a scan down the Fortune 500 a…

It's sample bias. We think of examples of consumer companies because we are all consumers.

I wrote about it a while ago: http://chester.id.au/2013/01/05/on-selling-to-consumers/

Re: The Only Way to Grow Huge

#47

Post by larrys »

pg wrote: post #36

Note to Sam: It's possible to anticipate ways HN readers will misunderstand you, and tweak what you write to pre-empt them. It takes some practice, but I'd guess I'm now able to do it maybe 3/4 of the time. In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size…

I think one of the issues with short form writing where you don't take the time (or have the room) to qualify things is that you are going to open up what you write to multiple interpretations of (what you call) "misunderstanding".

Take this statement at the opening:

"All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people."

The statement "all companies" and "only one way" is pretty complete and absolute by my reading.

When obviously there are plenty of large companies that have not relied on word of mouth. For example Boeing. Or Asplundh a large privately help tree contractor. Or haliburton. Etc. Even "in the beginning". Or Fedex is another.

Of course there is a subset of "all companies" for which this statement is true. So a footnote would have helped or a few words as qualifiers to the original thought.

Re: The Only Way to Grow Huge

#49

Post by pak »

pg wrote: post #36

Note to Sam: It's possible to anticipate ways HN readers will misunderstand you, and tweak what you write to pre-empt them. It takes some practice, but I'd guess I'm now able to do it maybe 3/4 of the time. In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size…

> In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size they don't have to rely on making something great to grow bigger, but that if you look back at the earliest history of those companies, you'll find most did. (emphasis mine)

It's hard to call it a misunderstanding when the title of the post starts boldly with "The Only" and the first paragraph starts with "All companies". The premise of there being some universal rule for growth is absurd and requires only a few counterexamples, of which there are certainly many to consider (this page now contains dozens), to be demonstrably false.

By reinterpreting the author's argument with a requalification of most, you've already reached a much more sane argument. But you know as well as I do that this post would never frontpage if it had been called "The Best Way to Get Huge" or "The Way Most Companies Become Huge".

Edit: Or maybe it would have anyway? Sam Altman is a partner at YC [1] and I can't help but wonder if such content gets a boost to frontpage no matter what. After all, people have shown that penalties are applied to a hidden list of phrases and domains which boots them off the frontpage [2], so the same principle might be applied in reverse to certain things. For example, the controversy penalty might be removed for certain domains. I'm sorry, but after reading [2] my faith in the scoring system here is at an all-time low.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman

[2]: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

Re: The Only Way to Grow Huge

#50

Post by larrys »

tlb wrote: post #21
pak wrote: post #4

> All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people. This is a bad opening premise. Time Warner and Comcast are huge and they don't seem like word of mouth companies to me. Boeing is pretty huge and they don't sell anything directly to ordinary consumers. I would never run around marketing Pfizer products to my friends. Take a scan down the Fortune 500 a…

Cable absolutely became huge as a result of word of mouth. It's been a mature business for 25 years so you may not be old enough to remember, but when it started people were pretty excited about 50 clear channels instead of 2 staticky ones. They told their friends and invited them over to watch shows they otherwise couldn't get. Boeing became huge in the 1920s and 30s. I imagine pilots talked to each other a lot abou…

"I imagine pilots talked to each other a lot about what planes they liked flying, and they could not have succeeded if those conversations didn't favor them."

With respect to Boeing one of the first things actually was a government contract that they received for the war effort. Then they nearly went bust after the war ended.

This is some of the story. There is also an excellent documentary on Boeing.

http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/boeing_bio/chapter3....

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