Nivi · November 21st, 2008
Here are the latest and greatest posts from Twitter (RSS) and FriendFeed (RSS). We use FriendFeed for the longer stuff and Twitter for the shorter stuff!
On specialization in lean startups:
“Specialization is for insects.” – Robert Heinlein
“Break the ‘union mindset’ of specialization. Ask everyone to attack the bottleneck wherever it is.” – Bernie Thompson
Kayak‘s CEO on stealing a page out of Google’s playbook:
Steve Hafner: “[At Kayak], we are of the mentality that for every dollar which could be placed into marketing we would rather place it into engineering and make the product better…”
Sramana Mitra: “So you have built traction [for Kayak] with organic word of mouth?”
Steve Hafner: “It is a page out of Google’s playbook. Build a great technology, syndicate that out to other affiliates like AOL who already have audience and then keep innovating on the product to make folks come back to you directly.”
Zappos‘ CEO on culture over customer service:
“Your company culture and your company’s brand are really just two sides of the same coin… You may think that our number 1 priority [at Zappos] is customer service but it’s actually not. Our number 1 priority for the company is company culture… The reason why we ended up selling [LinkExchange]… it wasn’t a fun place to go to work for anymore… we didn’t know… to look for culture fit when we hired people.” – Tony Hsieh
Random stuff:
“90% of the salespeople out there are below average because performance is a curve, not a line.” – Seth Godin [Good advice for any group, not just salespeople!]
“A lot [of] what’s written about Silicon Valley… is actually part of a sales pitch… for the venture ecosystem.” – Sean Murphy
“Spending our cash is the same as spending our equity.” – Jason Goldberg
Topics Quotes