Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Yup. It's not a huge business. Right. I think for many years, that was where they were focusing energy. When really, there's a big potential problem with their current business as things go more mobile. Now, they're looking at all these other moonshot opportunities. I think for a long time, they thought productivity could be a second huge business for them. Yeah. I was going to give this acquisition a B for many of the reasons you initially started talking about. It wasn't a huge succeed, but they didn't spent a lot of money. It's not losing a lot of money for them or consuming a lot of capital like YouTube. I think I'm convinced by your argument because for technology companies where you operate in this battlefield everyday where there this huge fog of war and it's very ... Uncertainty is a way of life. The one resource that you have that's most important for startups and big companies alike, even Apple and Google and Microsoft and Amazon is your focus. This was a pretty major delusion of focus for Google for a long time. Obviously, they've been very, very successful in things like search and android and many others. That resource is very precious, and for both us working with startups, this is what we coach founders all the time, focus, focus, focus. This is the most important thing. It's all that you have as a startup. I think I'm convinced Ben. I'm going to be B minus.…

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