
A Note About Sabeer Bhatia's Interview in Founders at Work - jl
http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2009/02/a-note-about-sabeer-bhatias-interview.html
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wallflower
Googling down Internet memory lane for HoTMaiL. Hallucinogenic optimism. Great
phrase.

> Jurvetson remembers: "He brought in these revenue estimates showing that he
> was going to grow the company faster than any in history. We dismissed the
> projections outright, but he insisted, 'You don't believe we're going to do
> that?' He had _hallucinogenic_ _optimism_. He had an unquenchable sense of
> destiny. But he was right. He grew the subscriber base faster than any
> company in the history of the world."

Wired 6.12 "HotMale" December 1998

[http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.12/hotmale.html?pg=2...](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.12/hotmale.html?pg=2&topic=&topic_set=)

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zhyder
Why is this needed? JL just interviewed people, and they subjectively stated
their opinions, however true or false. I would think the burden of
independently verifying every claim (esp regarding fuzzy details of what
people _said_ in private) would be too great.

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aristus
For the same reason any journalist wants to be told the truth, to know when
they are not told the truth, and to call people out when it happens. As a
proxy for absolute truth, good journalism requires complete reportage even
years after publication. Rep and goodwill are your most valuable assets.

I don't know JL well but I imagine that she would not do this over of a simple
he said / she said disagreement. On the other hand I don't think this deserves
to be front-page news -- she is only making sure she has the record straight.

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thinkzig
Slightly OT here, but F@W is one of my all-time favorites. I found it very
inspiring and informative.

I remember reading somewhere that Jessica Livingston might be working on a
sequel. Does anyone know if there's any truth to this?

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gcheong
I believe she announced she was working on a sequel during the talk she gave
at the 2008 Business of Software conference.

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anuraggoel
I found Sabeer Bhatia's interview one of the less useful ones in the book,
though it was still worth reading. He sounded too negative about VCs, became a
Google fanboy for no reason multiple times during the conversation, and gave
too much importance to the notion of the 'killer idea'. Compare this to (say)
Mitch Kapor's interview, and you see two completely different personalities,
only one of which I would enjoy working with.

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davidw
I really liked the fact that there were some seriously different people
interviewed. For instance, the Excite guy, fresh out of college, compared with
the RIM guy, who chose between the Blackberry and some project for the space
shuttle. And yet they both got rich out of their respective startups. I liked
seeing that variety.

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aristus
Has he responded to this? Are there any more errata in F@W?

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jl
Sabeer approved the interview before publication, but after the book was
published he asked me to remove those parts if there was a second edition. He
didn't say specifically that the things he said were false, just that they
hurt people's feelings. (Many people in the book cut stuff out of their
interviews, but usually because the material was controversial or
confidential, not false.) But once I got evidence that what he said was
actually false, it seemed appropriate to post a statement about it
immediately.

None of the other things people said in interviews were false that I’m aware
of.

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zandorg
Five words: Passwords in the browser cache

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zandorg
To be more concise: When using Hotmail in 1997 on a college machine, I found
that the cache contained people's Hotmail passwords. That's not a sign of
genius.

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herval
If you're able to make 400 million bucks with that, it definitely is! (a
business genius, at least - which by itself is a lot, no?)

