Business is broken the same way that car was. The effort that goes into looking productive is not merely wasted, but actually makes organizations less productive. Suits, for example. Suits do not help people to think better. I bet most executives at big companies do their best thinking when they wake up on Sunday morning and go downstairs in their

I don't spend that much money because once you get used to spending money, it's very hard to get unused to. Happiness is reality compared to expectations. If I have low expectations for material things in my life, then I'll be happy. If I get used to fancy meals all the time, not only will it ruin McDonald's for me, but even the fancy food would

Livingston: Was there a cold call that you made that turned out to be pivotal? Kraus: No, the pivotal things were all unintentional. Like the way we got turned on to the Web: it was about '94 and we were deciding between two technologies for the interface. How do you present search technology to the user if it's not a command line? One was

Try to answer every possible question that that person could raise. That's the description of a business plan, really.

Livingston: What advice would you give to hackers who are thinking about starting a company or making something on their own? Wozniak: First of all, try to have the highest of ethics and to be open and truthful about things, not hiding. If you have to hide something for company reasons, at least explain what you're doing. Don't mislead people. Know

We had to raise the price a couple of times. We didn't have to, but raising the price actually increased the number of units that we sold. I guess because it looked more legitimate with the more realistic price. Livingston: If people have to pay more, they take the product more seriously? Spolsky: Definitely. There was a five-user license that was

A company that is not designed to create high-tech products is very unlikely to have the culture or the DNA that it takes to create high-tech products. So if you are a high-tech person in that company, then you're basically a glorified typist in some sense. It's very unlikely that the kind of people who would be successful in an entertainment

Tip number two: you can't get too attached to your vision in a startup, because things may change. It's not a sign of failure to change your vision. I remember in a previous company, we wanted to be this, but we were offered a consulting contract to do this, that, and the other thing, and, yeah, that wasn't in the plan, but we'll take that, because

Replay probably did us a fabulous favor when they stepped across the line. There's a line in the sand that those media companies think about. You don't know where it is, but if you step over it, they're going to get you. Replay stepped over it by doing automatic commercial skipping. You didn't even have to fast-forward through the commercials. They