Had a fantastic meeting with Chuck as part of ETrek. He was very down to earth and candid about his early experiences. As someone very interested in entrepreneurial aspects of early stage high technology business it was exciting to hear him speak about his relationship with John, his experiences with VC’s who backed him then, his experiences doing business with Xerox, Apple and Microsoft.
To me what was most interesting aspect of the talk was his attitude about not building market share by killing the competition but by out-innovating them. His philosophy seemed to create company and value for society by innovating. I wonder if living by that philosophy is still an option in the ‘internet generation’ business. I sometime also wonder how much of the early idealism and philosophy about business developed over time can be retained in organizations that grow to a few thousand employees. Retaining the core values seems to get increasingly harder as the company gathers critical mass, ironically which is when it needs these intangibles the most.
