Birkenstock IPO’d today at a ~$8B valuation.
Its CEO Oliver Reichert did a massive turnaround in the past decade: sales 5x’d from $125m in 2012 to $1.3B in 2022.
The wildest part: he has zero background in footwear or fashion.
Prior to taking over the top job... See more
One result of this past tech cycle was a view that companies needed to build hyper complex ponzi schemes of ambition in order to accumulate capital and be valued. This led to a variety of shooting stars that never realized their main goal.
Another view was an insane amount of value ascribed to hyper-narrow features masquerading as companies, leading... See more
identifying the root cause of a problem is the most important thing
Steve Jobs gave one of his best interviews about building products back in 1995.
Anyone who wants to craft amazing products should watch it.
Here are 9 quotes from Jobs that really resonated with me:
Or take HEY. HEY has tens of thousands of paying customers. For us that's a win. For Google/Gmail it would be a huge failure. They need a whole lot more to make something worth it. We need a whole lot less to make it a spectacular success. HEY has tens of thousands of users. Gmail has a billion. So are we "losing" to Gmail? Or are HEY and Gmail... See more
"We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy" is a surprisingly profound quote. When I ask people who've pulled off remarkable things, it's interesting how many confirm that they wouldn't have started if they'd know how long and difficult the road would be.
The best tech companies drive strategy through product. This is why founders and CEOs tend to be product leaders, and product / design / engineering is more important than ops / marketing / finance. Here’s what this looked like for me as a business leader at Amzn and Facebook: