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.
The reason social media is so difficult for most organizations: Itβs a process, not an event.
I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.
Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need.
Once the Xerox copier was invented, diplomacy died.
I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.