Lesson #1: Great Products Expand Markets Taylor Swift moved to Nashville at 13 and went door-to-door to record labels. They all turned her down. Labels saw country music on the decline with young listeners, and didn't see a market for a teen country artist.
There is a filmmaker that worked for Pixar that put this beautifully, and he used the metaphor of doing anything difficult, but for your high purposes of building a company. He says, "If you're sailing across the ocean and your goal is to avoid weather and waves, then why the hell are you sailing?" You have to embrace that sailing means that you ca... See more
Did Steve jobs ever say, "Hey, I want to make a $100 million company?" That was never in discussion. He said, "I want to make insanely great products. Then I want to get really good at marketing because I want everybody in the world to have an Apple device, and the way to do that is to get really good at marketing."