

Breaking Bad, Microsoft, and Ecosystems - jwallaceparker
http://daltoncaldwell.com/breaking-bad-microsoft-ecosystems

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atamyrat
I recommend Breaking Bad, there's some startup lessons there.

On S03E10, entire episode is Walter and Jesse trying to catching a fly. One
small fly inside huge lab. Jesse wants to give up and continue cooking, but
for Walter, this is absolutely critical issue. I thought this episode was
quite boring, but then Walter explains himself and it finally hit me: It was
like assertion code failure, something that should not ever happen under your
assumptions. You don't just ignore assertion failures. Code could still work
and you can still ship it, but that code is not what you think it is anymore.
This small fly in lab is going to ruin your entire product. Drop everything
and catch that fly first.

Another interesting thing is, you can understand what it means to "know your
metrics". They have pureness metric to scientifically measure their product
quality. Pureness is what makes their product best in the market and they
never compromise on it. It is interesting that how they keep an eye on it and
why it matters.

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swah
And the funny thing is how much he changes to the later seasons when a dirty
place is "perfect".

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jblock
Bill Gates was in the empire business.

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gruseom
Bill Gates was in the BASIC interpreter business.

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rbanffy
And they did a couple very good ones. I loved Applesoft BASIC.

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meisterbrendan
Why isn't Albuquerque a tech capital when it has everything else going for it?
It's not a cool place to be. Young whippersnappers taking on the world want to
be around like-minded (read: young and educated) people, who congregate in
big, cool cities like Boston, NYC, Seattle. Not Albuquerque.

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michaelochurch
Right, but young and educated people only like New York, Boston, and Seattle
because other young and educated people live there. There are multiple
equilibria. Major investment could break that cycle.

There's actually one very easy exploit: young, educated people hate forking
over a third or half of their earnings in rent. The problem is that there's no
location (that I know of) where: (a) it's easy to start a product-focused
business, which requires funding, and (b) rents are reasonable. You have to
choose (a) or (b). Most young people are willing to bleed on the altar of real
estate because they believe it will help their career in the long run (and
that's probably true).

New York is going to be the world's capital for, at least, the next 50 years.
Boston has some of the top universities. So these will always be important
locations. There's no reason, though, that another one couldn't be created. It
would just take a lot of concerted investment. If I were going to pick a
place, I'd probably choose Minneapolis: it has a lot of smart people and
undervalued talent (engineer salaries are about 60% of what they are in NYC)
but the cost of living is low and the only negative is the winter cold, which
is not nearly as bad as it's made out to be. (If the 3 worst things about a
place are December, January, and February, that's a good location.)

If there was an easy way to get funding in Albuquerque or Minneapolis, you'd
see a lot of sharp, young people moving there. If you make a decent salary,
aren't getting robbed on rent, and have a reasonable (4+ weeks) vacation
allotment, you're pretty much location-agnostic as long as the place has smart
people and decent hangouts. With 4 weeks vacation and money for hotels and
flights, you can make more use of New York's amenities than most New Yorkers
do, and more cheaply than it costs to pay the city's exorbitant rent.

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protomyth
I wouldn't bet on Minneapolis. The local tax laws are pretty harsh, the
weather has some extremes, rent and housing are higher than they should be,
and it is not a young person friendly area. Plus, the UoM isn't really a tech
school and the tech scene isn't going to recover from out sourcing and
Medtronics / Fingerhut's problems.

I believe one of the states in the upper plains could become a tech capital if
they worked at it, but MN is problematic and everyone else sees oil coming.

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ChuckMcM
I've wondered the same things as Dalton, why isn't there a city in New Mexico
or an area that is as densely high tech as the Bay Area? My guess is it is the
lack of ready access to capital, the New Mexico tech seems way more "R" than
"D" (in the R&D spectrum) and research consumes more money than it produces.

