Winner-Take-All Speed Over Perfection

““If there were two paths where we had to choose one thing or the other, and one wasn’t obviously better than the other,” he explained in a 2003 public talk at Stanford, “then rather than spend a lot of time trying to figure out which one was slightly better, we would just pick one and do it. And sometimes we’d be wrong.... But oftentimes it’s better to just pick a path and do it rather than just vacillate endlessly on the choice.””

“The document pushed a familiar refrain about time to market. “Speed is of the essence for three reasons,” the spec noted: The product’s inherent network effects meant the first mover will have a tremendous advantage. Every day we have the market to ourselves is an irreplaceable chance to build an insuperable lead. The company needs to demonstrate a revenue track record going back at least 6 months for the IPO. X-Click could provide immediate revenues. Competitors such as Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon are hot on our heels in terms of matching basic P2P functionality. X-Click is needed to counter their superior distribution and ability to integrate.”