aldamiz

Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bee does not know this, so it goes on flying anyway

Antoine Magnan (link)

A friend of mine told me about his high school friend.

He met him by chance several years after high school and asked what was he up to. “I have a company, freecondoms.com“, he said. Freecondoms, wtf, what a looser, my friend thought (my friend was an executive at one of America’s largest corporations, probably high paycheck, 9 to 5, good reputation, health insurance, big car).

My friend met his high school friend a couple of years later and asked what was he up to. “I have a company, freeipods.com“, he said. Freeipods, wtf, this is getting better, my friend thought (my friend was still an executive at one of America’s oldest corporations, same high paycheck as two years earlier, 9 to 5, good reputation, health insurance, big car, house in the suburbs).

My friend met his high school friend a couple of years later and asked what was he up to. “I have a company, xxx, a team of 50 persons, annual revenue of xxx”, he said (sorry I don’t remember the name of the company and details, but it was a “perfectly fine” company). Wtf, I wish I could work for him. I’ve just been fired, don’t even have health insurance for my family and what’s worse I don’t know what to do now, my friend thought.

This story is almost totally real (my friend is a great guy and it’s amazingly intelligent and entrepreneur, he has not been fired, doesn’t work anymore for Corporate America, and I don’t know if he has a house in the suburbs and I don’t care, so if my friend reads this, don’t get mad at me, you’ve just been used and prototyped to make a point).  Anyway, I heard the story and a week later I read this quote:

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.

• Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s.

Europe is educating youth to be my friend not the friend of my friend.

What We Find Changes Who We Become

Jim Michaels, editor durante unos 40 años de la revista Forbes y para algunos el mejor editor de negocios que haya existido, murió la semana pasada. He tropezado en el NYT con esta columna que recoge feedback que daba a los periodistas de su equipo, y algunos de sus comentarios son geniales:

“If I can’t stay awake editing this, how can a reader stay awake reading it? What’s the point? If it has a point, maybe we can make a story of it.”

“This is the kind of sentence that drives readers to stop reading.”

“Your initials are on this so I suppose you understand it,” he wrote to one of his editors. “I don’t.” Atop another article, he wrote: “Replace or run white space.”

“This is exactly the sort of lazy writer jargon that will put us out of business. Please use the rich resources of the English language.”

“Too bloody complicated. That’s not writing. Make it simple and interesting. That’s writing.”

“This is so full of holes, it’s like Swiss cheese.”

“Here’s another one I can’t understand without help from a lawyer and accountant.”

“This is a paid advertisement. Did you forget to say he walks on water?”

Comentarios cortos, claros y cortantes. Seguro que era un tipo con el que se podía aprender muchísimo.

Siempre me ha gustado practicar el “únete a una empresa para hacerla triunfar, no porque haya triunfado”.

Rogelio Bernal en Consumer.

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1870s USA: pioneers heading West