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Bill Gates’ Exit Interview

Have you seen the Channel 9 interview with Bill Gates?  The link is below.  The interview is about a half-hour long, and focuses on Gate’s plans for the future as he transitions out of Microsoft and into his philanthropist foundation to help the poor.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/corporate/a_month_of_gates_7.html

 

Here are some quotes I found interesting.  These are the kinds of lines that drive my own thinking.  They drive me to fight for our brand position in the marketplace.

You’ve got to have product plans for every product you expect to release in the next few years.  And those plans have to be very realistic.

 Making sure we take some risky bets.

We are a very self-critical culture.

Software seems to be so complicated…  Software has some composability today…  But we have to make it easier to write big software.  We’ll have a lot more progress in the next decade.

 It’s always surpring to me there’s little attention paid to what we are doing for business users.

We care about the information worker.

We’re always sharing about where were going so people can make plans.

 

Best of luck, Bill.  Care to comment on the Channel 9 interview or this humble post?  🙂

–newshirt

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The Long Product Pipeline

Ever wonder why there are so few product-based companies, and so many service-based ones?  It’s all about cash flow.  The images below illustrate this, but they need some explanation.

Product-based companies
If you’ve got bright ideas of building a product and making lots of money, think again…  There’s a long pipeline from product development to big piles of sweaty cash.  First, you have to build the product.  Nobody’s paying you to do that.  It’s your nickel, pal.  And you can spend as much time as you like.  But then comes marketing and promotion.  Get it out there for the world to see – but still more time without pay.  And then, when they find your product, you’ve got to sell it and collect your reward.  It can take months or years.  And it can be exhausting.  See the stages below.

 

 

Service-based companies
Want cash quick?  That’s why there are many more service-based companies in the world.  In that model, you can find a client and begin invoicing them after the first thirty days.  The path to that stack of sweaty cash is much shorter.  But, the stacks are smaller.  And, you tend to live on them so they never accumulate.  Lose a client, and you’ll have to start over.  Even this model has it’s risks.

 

 

 

So which model suits you?  Got the time of invest and wait for the “big” payoff?  Or, do you prefer earning as you go along?  There are plenty of advantages to both, and only you can decide what’s right for you.  Hopefully, this short post will help in your decision-making process.

 

–newshirt