Larry Ellison: “Even my cat could write a browser.”
That’s some cat.
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Did I mention that Softwar is brilliant and that everyone in the tech industry should read it?
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Nearing the end of the book now; 2 quick takeaways:
1) It’s fascinating how much Microsoft was feared. I was too young for much of this, so I couldn’t grok why. Softwar drives the point home.
2) Microsoft’s weapon of choice was the bundle. I def need to dig into this.
Replying to
Jim Barksdale‘s famous quip “there are only two ways to make money in business: one is to bundle; the other is unbundle” makes more sense in this context. You can’t help but obsess over the bundle when Microsoft was consistently using it to trip you up.
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I'm ~10 years older than you, remember Microsoft as an existential threat to the tech world, and am surprised that Apple, Amazon and Google are not more feared now. That they coexist helps; that SaaS is not a monolith helps; that they were underdogs to Microsoft in the 90s helps.
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Replying to
I suspect that orgs are a reflection of their leaders, and the only leader today that’s Gates-ish in both paranoia and effectiveness is Zuckerberg. But because FB isn’t a platform, it isn’t as feared.
Plus, all the structural reasons you list, of course.
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