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"It's not enough to win, all others must fail" This isn't the DNA of a winner, this is the DNA of a sociopath.
"It's not enough to win, all others must fail" This isn't the DNA of a winner, this is the DNA of a sociopath.
No it isn't. If people keep throwing around these kind of assertions, these very serious psych diagnoses will lose all specificity and become useless.
(or perhaps you are asserting that the generous use of xxxxx-path cheapens the gravity of the situation for those suffering from mental illnesses)
What a fawning piece of tripe. Uncle Larry's monomania and "others must fail" sociopathy might have worked for Oracle in a particular market and time, but it would be a recipe for utter failure in a modern startup where adaptability and collaboration are more valued. He didn't have unique entrepreneurial DNA. He had some skills that were valuable, others that were deficient, and enough luck that the former outweighed…
Some here seem to think Entrepreneurship has changed into a kumbaya group hug where we just attend conferences together , check code into GitHub, might make a bit of money if we ask nicely, or sell "ads", and hope for an early exit because of our sheer brilliance, leaving the dirty work to our future parent.
The most valuable companies on the other hand look for sustainable competitive advantage, or as Peter Thiel would say, monopoly. That definitionally implies "all others must fail" at competing with you. That doesn't mean you don't have partners, it means in the area you excel at (hopefully a big area), you are the only game in town.
With Oracle it never was quite the only game in town, but it never lost being the clear revenue leader in RDBMS (and middleware after BEA).
If you are in an area where you can't do that or it's hard to do that, you're not going to build a super valuable company - maybe a super valuable online community or open source project. But not a really valuable company generating tremendous wealth beyond asset speculators.
Perhaps that's what's changed about entrepreneurship, and why you see Larry derided by some here. It isn't just about building companies anymore, it's about funding communities that might become companies with enough tinkering and luck.
"It's not enough to win, all others must fail" This isn't the DNA of a winner, this is the DNA of a sociopath.
If you read Peter Thiel's latest book, his argument is for monopoly over competition. Which is just another way of saying, all competition must fail. So far, it's worked for Facebook. They have trampled their competition, or they just buy them.
In a way, it reminds me of the consumer electronics market, especially the laptop PC market. Fierce competition forced down profits, and now seemingly every company is focused on cost cutting rather than making something we actually want to use. Both consumers and producers have lost out (woe is me who cannot buy a quality thinkpad anymore!).
What a fawning piece of tripe. Uncle Larry's monomania and "others must fail" sociopathy might have worked for Oracle in a particular market and time, but it would be a recipe for utter failure in a modern startup where adaptability and collaboration are more valued. He didn't have unique entrepreneurial DNA. He had some skills that were valuable, others that were deficient, and enough luck that the former outweighed…
Is collaboration valued in modern startups? I hadn't noticed.
"It's not enough to win, all others must fail" This isn't the DNA of a winner, this is the DNA of a sociopath.
If you read Peter Thiel's latest book, his argument is for monopoly over competition. Which is just another way of saying, all competition must fail. So far, it's worked for Facebook. They have trampled their competition, or they just buy them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe sociopathy is adaptive in the modern world.
Only if we let it be.
Which is why I added "in the modern world." In a tight-knit community sociopathic traits are probably much less beneficial than in an atomized, largely anonymous society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you read Peter Thiel's latest book, his argument is for monopoly over competition. Which is just another way of saying, all competition must fail. So far, it's worked for Facebook. They have trampled their competition, or they just buy them.
I read a piece by a (very reasonable) VC explaining the detriments of excess LP cash in the VC industry. The premise was that if 100 companies get funded in a space (say, local delivery) where normally, 10 companies would have, then even the ones who under normal circumstances would have "out competed" the others through superior service and product will have a tough time vs the torrent of cost cutting and "competiti…
The only way out of it is if a clear leader breaks away eventually, or else a new market will disrupt and subsume the capabilities of the old one mired in cost competition.