Predictablly irrational... part II

Our maladies of predictable irrationality have roots deeper than we have acknowledged thus far...

Watch Laurie Santos' TED talk to learn more

Steve Jobs' answer to 'What is object-oriented software?'

Found this gem of an explanation via @rabois

Steve Jobs explaining what OO software is in a Rolling Stone interview given in 1994

Would you explain, in simple terms, exactly what object-oriented software is?

Objects are like people. They're living, breathing things that have knowledge inside them about how to do things and have memory inside them so they can remember things. And rather than interacting with them at a very low level, you interact with them at a very high level of abstraction, like we're doing right here.

Here's an example: If I'm your laundry object, you can give me your dirty clothes and send me a message that says, "Can you get my clothes laundered, please." I happen to know where the best laundry place in San Francisco is. And I speak English, and I have dollars in my pockets. So I go out and hail a taxicab and tell the driver to take me to this place in San Francisco. I go get your clothes laundered, I jump back in the cab, I get back here. I give you your clean clothes and say, "Here are your clean clothes."

You have no idea how I did that. You have no knowledge of the laundry place. Maybe you speak French, and you can't even hail a taxi. You can't pay for one, you don't have dollars in your pocket. Yet I knew how to do all of that. And you didn't have to know any of it. All that complexity was hidden inside of me, and we were able to interact at a very high level of abstraction. That's what objects are. They encapsulate complexity, and the interfaces to that complexity are high level.

Thus, Silicon Valley.

" Thus, Silicon Valley." Yes, that's a complete sentence and I find that fascinating.

For more context head over to Caterina's blog, the sentence is about half way into the post.

Build what you cannot afford to buy...

My previous company's product was a sync and backup consumer product SugarSync.

With SugarSync we wrangled constantly with our cost of storage as we launched the service, designed incentives for referrals, tried to figure out optimal duration for free trial and so on.

So I was delighted to see a post on how another start-up is dealing with this issue. It is fantastic that they are able and willing to share their solution in such detail on ther blog.

Short list of lessons from Jeff Bezos

Short list of 3 items (full video here):

• Obsess over customers - Pay attention to competition but remember customers first.
• Invent - Listen to customer, invent for them, innovation is panacea.
  
• Think long term - Critical. 5-7 years time frame perspective. Be willing to be misunderstood. Be willing to change on feedback.

Bonus item:

• It is always day 1. Always, opportunity exists to innovate/obsess over customers.