nicole

It wasn’t an asset that either company had but the process of the acquisition itself forced them to get good at the thing that would determine their future success.

The main reason we don’t create more affordances, however, is pure egocentrism. When we just say whatever pops into our heads, we may think we’re making craggy, climbable conversational rock walls, when in fact we’re creating completely frictionless surfaces. For example, I’m thrilled to tell you about the 126 escape rooms I’ve done, but my love fo... See more

The challenge then becomes raise enough money and keep morale high enough for long enough so that you actually have the time to make it work. Hence the job of the CEO – the momentum creator.

I would advise, as an industry, to pull back from this obsession with user wants and user needs and instead to design for fun. What you want your players to feel, what is the emotional path for them to get there, and how does your software—your business product, if that's what you're building—take them along the path?

Conversational affordances often require saying something at least a little bit intimate about yourself, so even the faintest fear of rejection on either side can prevent conversations from taking off.

If I’m ever struggling to understand a business, taking a step back and saying “What is every party incentivized to do?” brings instant clarity. … When push comes to shove, Microsoft needs to defend their castle. They weren't defending it against a productivity upstart. They were defending it against an advertising company that was looking at it as... See more

(Curator's comment: This is referring to YouTube’s decision to offer YouTube Red, a subscription service for ad-free experience.) They’re getting their highest value users, which are the people that the advertisers actually want to reach to not see the ads and to do brand advertising you need enormous scale, I mean Facebook and YouTube are the only... See more