Gary Leff: “Flight delays get a lot of attention, and certainly mechanical and staffing issues are the fault of the airline. There’s also air traffic control which creates congestion – it isn’t just responsible for delays but also for longer flight times that get built into schedules. We don’t talk enough about that. Maybe the biggest failure in air travel is something we don’t talk about at all. How is it possible that people are being told to show up at the airport 2.5 to 3 hours before their flight, and that isn’t considered a failure of massive proportions?”
Andy Kessler: “With today’s flurry to invest in any company that can spell AI, Netscape’s biggest lesson is that nothing lasts forever. AOL bought Netscape in 1998 for $4.2 billion in stock. AOL’s peak value reached $222 billion in December 1999, and in January 2000 it bought Time Warner for $182 billion. The dot-com boom peaked a month later, and the merger was a massive failure. AOL stopped supporting Netscape browsers in 2008. In 2015 AOL was sold to Verizon for peanuts, and in 2021, along with the remains of Yahoo, it was sold to private-equity firm Apollo. In the current bull run, the “Magnificent Seven” stocks, growing on the backs of Netscape’s innovation, are worth $19 trillion. Netscape is a footnote in history but proof that the spark of a new idea and the freedom to pursue it, coupled with robust capital markets and even a dose of runaway speculation, can change everything. Even if the first movers, the original innovators, don’t make it.”
SaaStr: “Most B2B companies assume if customers aren’t complaining, they’re happy. If they’re not demanding attention, they don’t need it. If renewal conversations aren’t contentious, everything’s fine. This is one of the most expensive myths in B2B software. The customers who complain aren’t your biggest churn risk — they’re engaged enough to fight for a better experience. They care enough to push back. They’re giving you a chance to fix things. It’s the quiet ones you need to worry about. The ones who just… stop using your product as much. The ones who find workarounds. The ones who start looking elsewhere … but never tell you about it.”
Steve Stewart-Williams: “Psychologists have spent many decades sifting through the noise of human personality, and what they’ve found is surprisingly simple: five big traits that capture much of what makes you you. They’re called the Big Five, and they’re the closest thing psychology has to a periodic table of personality. Extraversion: Cheerfulness; sociability; assertiveness; Neuroticism: Proneness to anxiety, sadness, and other negative emotions; emotional volatility; Conscientiousness: Orderliness; reliability; industriousness; Agreeableness: Friendliness; politeness; compassion; Openness: Intellectual curiosity; creativity; openness to experience.” [via Arnold Kling]
