Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…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. Still more generous than me. All right. We have a new section, and this is a section where we talk about things that a media, or a movie, or a TV show, or something we're reading, or a book, or a new publication or something where we find fascinating. In true lingo, we're calling this the carve out. I will start with my carve out from this week. Actually, we'll call it, since the last episode. Bill Simmons launched The Ringer, and for those of you who are not subscribed to The Ringer, it's totally sports focused, but it's really the crown jewel of the Bill Simmons media empire. After Grantland, after his ... For those of you who don't know. Bill Simmons partnered with ESPN to launch Grantland, which was incredible long form content about sports. It was the most incredibly well-written pros about sports you could ever read that would take you on this journey and make comparisons to pop culture, an event that happened 50 years ago and truly relatable. Bill Simmons is a gift as a writer. We saw him launched a podcast. Finally, The Ringer, which is the thing that has ... It's starting as an e-mail newsletter in a website. It's a very small staff and it's a new media publication that Bill Simmons has launched after the tumultuous shutdown of Grantland by ESPN. It has probably made sense as a very expensive property. I'm going to read a quote from the first e-mail that went out, Bill introducing The Ringer. He does this great little section where he talks about all the names that it could have been. This is just one of the reasons why he's a great writer to read. He's talking about several of the names and the paragraph ends with upper echelon. It sounds like a hedge fund. Barnstorm, it sounds like a horse that would be favored to win the Kentucky Derby. Side 2, too insider. Grantworld, too Ludacris. F off ESPN, too easy. I think just rarely do you ever get a startup talking about their ridiculous naming meeting. The first e-mail includes the classic photograph of the whiteboard with all the potential names crossed off. It's just like ... It's some of the most relatable writing, even if you're not a sports person. It's just incredibly entertaining. I love it. I love it. I should say too, part of the inspiration for the carve out was my wife Jennie introduced me to two of Slates podcast, the Political Gabfest and the Culture Gabfest. Both of which are excellent and they both do a segment like this. Shout out to Slate and thank you to them. My carve out for the week is something that I think will ... It picks up on a lot of themes from our show going back to our very first episode. I just finally finished crossed off my reading list, Creativity, Inc. Which is the Pixar book by Ed Catmull. It is fantastic. One of the best books I have read. Certainly, this year, but in the past few years, best non-fiction books. Ordinarily, I'm pretty tough on business books. They can often be trite and repetitive. This was none of those things. I think listeners, if you enjoy our show, you will love this book. The one thing I would say from it, there is so many good stories from Steve Jobs stories, to all the Pixar history, and just general management lessons and startup lessons. My favorite part of it is talking about the creative process and managing that creative process which obviously Pixar is so good at. One of the points that Ed makes in the book is that is it always a struggle. Even at Pixar, they've done this so many times. There's this temptation for them, even within the company, to make it easier, to make it rinse and repeat. Why do they have to struggle every time? But if you don't have that struggle, you don't get something great. I think that is so applicable to startups. I see it with the companies that I work with. Everyday, there are good times and bad times. Even the companies that, to the outside world, look like it's all ... I'll use my least favorite phrase of “up into the right”, because it's always to the right. It looks like it's up as it goes to the right. Inside, it's up and down every single day. There are periods of just huge existential challenges. The book talks about that, every Pixar film and every Disney film since the acquisition, it's just had ... If you don't have this crisis, it's very hard to make something great.…

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