long-term thinking

I'm posting here three products that are doing very well. One is Google Earth - I often use it to learn geography. This product is great but not profitable. Scratch -- programming for children. I don’t know whether it makes money or not, but it’s also really great. Roblox, a kind of UGC sandbox game, which is very different from games that we usual

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I also think a lot about the old, iconic structures around the world that have stood the test of time and, in many cases, where we aren’t quite sure of all the details of how they were constructed. Marvels like the Colosseum, Roman aqueducts, or the Great Wall. Incredible architectural feats that were, by necessity, built to last and built slowly –... See more

Jeff Bezos says that if Amazon has a good quarter it’s because of work they did 3, 4, 5 years ago—not because they did a good job that quarter

When we sing in the shower, we hardly expect applause. In fact, that would be awfully weird.

But online, when just about anyone might be clicking, watching or sharing, it’s disappointing to put your work into the world and hear nothing.

Nothing but a black hole that absorbs your best work and reflects nothing back.

And if that happens again and again,... See more

The fact is, star brands take time to grow. Take some of the small makeup companies we have acquired recently, like Bliss and Urban Decay. When we bought them, they were little start-ups run by their founders—very simple businesses, but with a lot of originality in the products. So now we know we must nurture them until they have some history. But

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Don’t get fooled by the insane outliers. It’s a long, slow road. But if you can stomach the wait, the embarrassment, and the frustration, you just might make it.

Indeed the Oak tree King of Limbs, in Britain is over 1,000 years old. It has been growing quietly in place since before the Norman Conquest. The King doesn’t much care about one iPhone model to the next. 

Millennia long scales of engagement with the world around us are almost unimaginable when contrasted with the 2 week long Agile sprints popular i... See more

That's another thing too, where I'm only interested in people that do things for a long period of time. There is a subset of people that can start a great business or be a great investor for two years, five years, 10 years. I'm interested in people that, you started the conversation saying about Edwin Land and Estee Lauder. Okay. Two obsessives. Th... See more

The reason I say, "Listen, man, you guys should be reading Estee Lauder's autobiography", is because it is my belief that if you were able to bring her back from the dead and let her start a company today, she'd be kicking most entrepreneurs ass, up and down the court, Edwin Land too. Edwin Land started working on what would become Polaroid when he... See more