Nivi · October 9th, 2010
I’ve been blogging a bit on Quora — here are a couple recent posts.
What you can learn from The Social Network:
The Social Network is an incredibly well made and motivating film.
I don’t care about the facts of the matter — they’re irrelevant. The movie tells a better story about startup life than anything you’ve ever read in the press.
Pretend this is a film about fictional people and a fictional product. Here are a few things you can learn:
Facebook was built on strengths, not weaknesses. Mark, Sean, and Eduardo each have their strengths. If you focus on their weaknesses, they seem like bad apples. It is their strengths that make them effective. You can only build performance on strength — you cannot build it on weakness.
If you’re not in the room while the deal is going down, prepare to get screwed. My favorite line in the movie is when Sean and Mark meet Peter Thiel for a few minutes and Peter concludes the negotiation with, “So, who is this Eduardo Saverin?”
Cleantech is boring because it doesn’t attract product designers.
Cleantech problems are engineering problems, not product problems.
Here’s the product design of the best cleantech product ever: lots of clean energy in a very small space, at low cost — the end.
So cleantech attracts engineers who like to solve puzzles instead of product designers who like to build things like iPads and Quoras.
Right or wrong?
See my Quora posts for more masterpieces.
Topics Quora