This video features a cameo by the Automattic Lounge at 1:10. Read more about Mayer in the New York Times Magazine.
I love this quote from Kenya Hara of MUJI, via my Automattic colleague and design cylon Michael Pick.
We don’t want to be the thing that kindles or incites intense appetite, causing outbursts like “This is what I really want,” or “I simply must have this.” If most brands are about that, MUJI should be after its opposite. We want to give customers the kind of satisfaction that comes out as “this will do,” not “this is what I want.” It’s not appetite, but acceptance. Even within acceptance, however, there is an appropriate level. Our goal is to elevate it as high as possible…
…I would like to recognize the fact that desire sometimes involves obsession, causes egoism, or strikes a sour note. I wonder if humankind, having rushed after desire, has finally reached an impasse. Both the consumer society and individual cultures, chasing after desire and driven by appetite, are hitting a wall. In this sense, today we should value the qualities at work in acceptance: moderation, concession, and detached reason. Might acceptance be a form with one more level of freedom? Acceptance might involve resignation and slight dissatisfaction, but raising the level of acceptance thoroughly eliminates both. To generate “this will do,” by creating this very dimension of acceptance, one that is clearly self-confident and also truly competitive in a free economic society: this is MUJI’s vision.
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”
– Steve Jobs, as quoted here
“Q. Even compared to how “The Simpsons” has mocked Fox in the past, this seemed to push things to a different level. Are you sure there’s no one higher up than you on the corporate ladder who’s displeased with this?
“A. I think that we should always be able to say the holes in our DVDs are poked by unhappy unicorns.”
– Al Jean, producer of “The Simpsons,” on the show’s recent Banksy-directed opening sequence
In a nutshell, as related by venture capitalist Fred Wilson:
A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.
…
I’ve learned that great CEOs can and often will do a lot more than these three things. And that is OK.But I have also learned that if you cannot do these three things well, you will not be a great CEO.
“As we looked at customers’ blogging needs and what different companies were providing, we were particularly interested in what WordPress.com is doing. They have a host of impressive capabilities – from a scalable platform and leading spam protection, to great personalization and customization. WordPress powers over 8.5% of the web, is used on over 26 million sites, and WordPress.com is seen by over 250 million people every month. Not only that, Automattic is a company filled with great people focused on improving blogging experiences. So rather than having Windows Live invest in a competing blogging service, we decided the best thing we could do for our customers was to give them a great blogging solution through WordPress.com.”
– Dharmesh Mehta, Microsoft, on today’s partnership announcement with us at Automattic. Our post is here.
“Nevertheless, this Great Boom is also very different from all previous bubbles. This time around, globalization either will succeed and humanity will achieve a degree of freedom and prosperity that can scarcely be imagined, or globalization will fail and capitalism or even humanity itself may come to an end. The real alternative to good globalization is world war. And because of the nature of today’s technology, such a war would be apocalyptic in the twenty-first century. Because there is not much time left, the Great Boom, taken as a whole, either is not a bubble at all, or it is the final and greatest bubble in history.”
– Peter Thiel, in his essay, “The Optimistic Thought Experiment”
“Capitalism, I would assert, thrives on more, more, and more, but not so well when there is less or an expectation of less. This is not the Malthusian thesis, which maintained that at some point the world would run out of food to satisfy a growing population; it is an assertion that capitalism depends upon final demand and that if there ever comes a time when population growth slows, then the world’s most efficient economic system will be tested. If anything, my thesis is anti-Malthusian in its assertion that there will always be enough production to satisfy a growing population, but perhaps not enough new people to sustain growing production.”
– Bill Gross manages PIMCO’s gigantical bond fund. This excerpt is from his August client letter.
“It is my great hope someday to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known, namely that our highest currency is respect.”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in “The Black Swan”
“As a matter of profit and loss, it doesn’t make sense to store wool in a spa and let it convalesce for six months, but the methods of Luciano Barbera were never destined for a get-rich-quick guide to manufacturing. His business will make sense only to customers, and for them, quality has a logic of its own.”
– A look at the waning days of a bespoke merchant: “From Taxis to Textiles, Italy Chooses Tradition Over Growth”
Hi, I'm Paul Kim. I work for Automattic. We make WordPress.com, and much more. Many of us also contribute to the WordPress.org open source project. This is my personal blog.
