An awful lot of successful technology companies ended up being in a slightly different market than they started out in. Microsoft started with programming tools, but came out with an operating system. Oracle started doing contracts for the CIA. AOL started out as an online video gaming network.
Interpretation
Successful technology companies often pivot to unexpected markets from their original focus.
This quote highlights the adaptability and evolution of successful technology companies, noting that initial business ideas can lead to entirely different, yet more successful markets. It underscores the importance of being flexible and responsive to opportunities that arise along the business journey, as illustrated by companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and AOL, which have all shifted from their original business models to achieve greater success.
In practice
In a keynote speech about entrepreneurship, one might quote Marc Andreessen to emphasize the importance of pivoting in business.
People are so bad at driving cars that computers don't have to be that good to be much better. Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you're like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers.
It's really rare for people to have a successful start-up in this industry without a breakthrough product. I'll take it a step further. It has to be a radical product. It has to be something where, when people look at it, at first they say, 'I don't get it, I don't understand it. I think it's too weird, I think it's too unusual.'
Entrepreneurs say in an economic boom it's actually hard to build a company because everybody's too excited and there is too much money funding too many marginal companies.
I love what the Valley does. I love company building. I love startups. I love technology companies. I love new technology. I love this process of invention. Being able to participate in that as a founder and a product creator, or as an investor or a board member, I just find that hugely satisfying.
China is very entrepreneurial but has no rule of law. Europe has rule of law but isn't entrepreneurial. Combine rule of law, entrepreneurialism and a generally pro-business policy, and you have Apple.
An awful lot of successful technology companies ended up being in a slightly different market than they started out in.
SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it's very inexpensive to send mail.
Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person's life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government.
No matter how beautiful, no matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it.
Green technologies - going green - is bigger than the Internet. It could be the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.
Believing we know what makes prosperity work, ignoring the nature of the actual prosperity all around, we change the rules within which the Internet revolution lives. These changes will end the revolution.
For decades, the pace of technological change in manufacturing has outstripped that in the economy as a whole. And, so, firms - manufacturing firms - have found it easier to continue producing by - with - reducing their workforces.
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