A Quote by Steve Jobs
A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.
Related Quotes
Who knows? Maybe they’re right. Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings. Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it. But we have chosen a different road. And in the end that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose. We are even free to choose the wrong thing.
Unlike a lot of other game companies that, once they launch a game, downsize their teams radically, our plan is to keep the team together and continue to focus on building content.
Many companies operate from more of a command-and-control environment - they decide what's going to happen at headquarters and have the organization execute. That doesn't work here because it's the community of users who really have control.
So we enable, not direct. We think of our customers as people, not wallets. And that has implications for how we run the company. We partner with our customers and let them take the company where they think it's best utilized.
The fact that used cars is our largest category is a good example. We would not have sat in a conference room and said, "Hey, how about used cars?" So what can be learned that is extensible to other companies is to ask what are your customers doing with your products that maybe you didn't anticipate that they would do? How do you think of your customers as your research and development lab, as opposed to having an R&D lab at headquarters?
At the end of the day, customer choice is essential. And we don't make products that compete with Apple, nor make products that compete with Google. Our customers come in both iOS and Android flavors, and I hope our customers can still buy the products they want to purchase wherever they want to purchase them.
I grew up with a lot of friends that had a lot of abilities to do a lot of different things and chose different routes and it wasn't a great outcome for them.
The future of communicating with customers rests in engaging with them through every possible channel: phone, e-mail, chat, Web, and social networks. Customers are discussing a company's products and brand in real time. Companies need to join the conversation.
I guess destiny isn't the path chosen for us, but the path we chose for ourselves.
You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thing- you can always repent, atone : but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing.
I see "demand creation" as a 20th-century construct that's bound up with advertising. It's an outmoded view of marketing that says, "First, we build a product or service, then we advertise it into people's lives." Embedded this view is the belief that companies control brands. This is a myth. My message all along has been that brands are actually created by customers, not companies. Companies only provide the raw materials - the products, messaging, behaviors - that people use these to create brands.
I think technology advanced faster than anticipated. In that whirlwind, a lot of companies didn't survive. The reason we have done well is because, even in that whirlwind, we kept heads-down focused on the customers. All the metrics that we can track about customers have improved every year.
Motivate them, train them, care about them and make winners out of them. We know if we treat our employees right, they'll treat the customers right. And if customers are treated right, they'll come back.
![J. W. "Bill" Marriott, Jr.](/assets/images/photos/avatars/j-w-"bill"-marriott-jr.webp)
We are focused on features, not products. We eliminated future products that would have made the complexity problem worse. We don't want to have 20 different products that work in 20 different ways. I was getting lost at our site keeping track of everything. I would rather have a smaller set of products that have a shared set of features.
Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people.
If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it - a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all - you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. We don't have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source.
All these companies that grew to any sizable proportions were all founded with a belief or a cause bigger than their products or services. It was their products or services that helped them bring that cause to life.
Related Authors
Bill Gates Quotes
American
Businessman
Charlie Munger Quotes
American
Businessman
Dieter F. Uchtdorf Quotes
German
Businessman
Elon Musk Quotes
South African
Businessman
Henry Ford Quotes
American
Businessman
Jim Rohn Quotes
American
Businessman
Joseph B. Wirthlin Quotes
American
Businessman
Mark Cuban Quotes
American
Businessman
Mark Zuckerberg Quotes
American
Businessman
Peter Drucker Quotes
American
Businessman
Richard Branson Quotes
British
Businessman
Russell Simmons Quotes
American
Businessman
Sam Altman Quotes
American
Businessman
Tom Peters Quotes
American
Businessman
Walt Disney Quotes
American
Businessman
Warren Buffett Quotes
American
Businessman