On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 9:15 AM, Jared Spool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Do you think that's how they pitched it to their investors? "We think it's > quite likely we'll never have a business model that gives you the 10x > returns you're looking for, but if luck has it, we just might stumble across > one. Then, boy, won't *you* look really smart?!!?" > > I don't know about facebook, but I know metaweb said "We know this is big. We know someone will do it successfully. We don't know if we can do it. We don't know how it'll make money. We suspect if it is big, we'll figure out a way to make lots of money" and they got a lot of dough to start trying. Of course, they had made it big with Tellme, so had "proven" they were good at doing ridiculously hard things. Venture capital is not like other kinds of money. They bet on a lot of different highly unlikely things. All their bets are on weird and unknown aproaches. They bet smart people will figure things out. They bet that if even one of their 50+ investments makes it big, they will make crazy piles of money. They don't work like the businesses you work with. They work like professional gamblers. Innovation and optimization require very different approaches. > > p.s. The original point to this entire conversation on this list is, in the > meantime, what do the newly-hired UX people at Facebook do to ensure that > every design decision supports the wont-exit-for-three-years business model? > http://is.gd/3djk If the folks at Facebook are smart, the newly hired people are working on the company's goals, which may not include making money. They are working on increasing visits, working on improving lock-in, working on broading the usage base.... A great designers knows what the company's goals are, and works on designs that move toward that goal (which may or may not be reflected in the press.) Great leadership in a business makes sure everyone knows what the comapany's goals are. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
