Ben Thompson: commitment

Transcript context

…Yeah, you're a primary source now. What's going on? That was a challenge because I started out, I had no access. I didn't know anyone. In some respects, I missed those days. I still remember the first time I had a company very angry at me and called me in. It was Twitter, actually, because I had teased out their results. Their direct response program was failing. This was years ago. They got super mad. In my next update, I'm like, this is possible. I kind of walked back a little bit. The next quarter came out and they're like, I don't need to write it down, but it was a big thing. They said, it's not working out. I was totally right, and I was so mad that I walked back a little bit. But I'm glad it happened because when I started out, no one cared. No one paid any attention. Now, people cared and paid attention. I'm glad I was right on that one because it gave me courage going forward. What is interesting about feedback from companies is everyone from COO down or VP down, they always push back. They're like, no, you got this wrong, you don't understand XYZ. I never get pushback from CEOs, even when I'm wrong. What I've come to realize is, CEOs are surrounded by people telling them what they want to hear. That's their incentive. The reason why the VP is attacking me is because he's worried I'm going to make the VP look bad in front of the CEO. That's the concern. Whereas the CEO is like, they're so thirsty for any feedback that's outside of that rotten incentive structure that's just inherent in a corporation. Sometimes they know they have more information than I do. They're aware that there are things that I don't know, but they're grateful to have a different point of view. Over time, I transfer from having no access to having total access. I can reach out to basically anyone. Just for people who haven't, let's just go through the lineup. You've had this year Mark Zuckerberg, you've had Jensen from Nvidia. I'm trying to think of some of your early big ones. You have Rich Barton on from Zillow. I think he credited you with, you convince us to start buying houses. You convinced us in the open door article that—…

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