Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…Well, it’s interesting. Let’s talk about Ballmer’s personality here for a minute which we can’t in this show without talking about. But I want to talk about Ballmer’s personality and compare it to Mark Zuckerberg’s who is as we’ve talked about on this show, probably the acquirer, the CEO of an acquiring company whose style we’ve analyzed most on this show. And Zuckerberg is equally very, very aggressive and willing to come in with very high prices. But he’s sort of like the silent killer type. He doesn’t say a lot. He kind of comes down. He flies down. He likes to buy Southern California companies or try to buy Southern California companies, flies down to the meeting and he says, “Hey. Well, I’m going to crush you or I’m going to help you. And here’s the number, it’s a lot of money. Let’s get this done.” But the thing about Zuckerberg, I think with some potential missteps thus far as we talked about on Oculus in the last episode. Like his judgement is generally pretty spot on. He’s been right a lot more than he’s been wrong with these things. Ballmer, is a very... I wouldn’t say that his judgment is bad but he takes a very different stylistic approach to being an aggressive acquirer. He is loud, he is boisterous. We will link to it in the show notes. Very famous for his public persona and his “developers, developers, developers” chant, his jumping up and down onstage. That’s just him, too. We’ve both cross paths with him in Seattle and elsewhere in our travels. You have a conversation with him and he just oozes enthusiasm. That’s what he’s bringing to the Clippers. Yeah, you’re absolutely right on that. I think he actually jumped on a trampoline and dunked when they were announcing the new Clippers mascot. He still does the standard Ballmer lean-back in the middle of an arena full of people and yell and fling his arms around and talk about “I love the Clippers! I love this company!” “I love this company!” So good. Drenched in sweat. Steve is the best.…

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