A lot of companies don’t make it because in the process of trying to get many things right, they don’t get anything right.
Why are they in such a hurry?
A great company is a privilege, and it’s a privilege best earned through a singular product, not a collection of products. Entrepreneurs and creatives think about batches of products —creating an... See more
Focus, as Steve Jobs said, is about saying no.
The only dangerous competitors are focused ones.
Ergo there are things that even the most dangerous competitors say no to, and it would be worth thinking explicitly about what those are.
One of the things Steve [Jobs] would say [to me] because he was worried I wasn’t focused — he would say, “How many things have you said no to?” I would tell him I said no to this. And I said no to that. But he knew I wasn’t interested in doing those things. There was no sacrifice in saying no [to those things]. What focus means is saying no to... See more
One thing I do look back on fondly was how incredibly focused we were. Resources and time were so tight that you could feel the weight of all the things you weren’t working on. You had real conviction that the thing you were doing was the most important thing.
To pick a somewhat trivial example, at fireside chats with Mark (the predecessor to the... See more