It isn't the consumers' job to know what they want.
If your plan is to put a product out there that people can see and understand, then by golly, we're going to get along just fine.
Successful investing is all about common sense.
During my time growing a company in the private sector, one of my guiding principles was to meet and hear feedback from as many customers as possible.
I don't like being naïve about the market, and I always try to make things as great as I can. Then I hope that there's an audience that enjoys them, and that hopefully those things get protected.
If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups.
Regional developers have a clear head start in their home communities. They have been there longer and understand their market. As a result, these markets are, in fact, more competitive than those in Manila.
The global market does not understand the India risk as well as we do, and therefore, we have the arbitrage facility of making better margin on the same set of Indian firms than what we would have made by giving rupee loans.
I think American industry has lost perspective about their products.
We do have our finger on the pulse of the marketplace, if for no other reasons than having all these live events and listening to our audience all the time.
The closer you get to your ultimate customer, the more you learn about your business.
I think one of the key differentiators I bring to the table as a venture capitalist is a solid understanding of the public markets and how they operate.
I got to learn from the American audience. Hearing what it is they're not getting. These are audiences, 35 to 40, an older demographic that controls seven to 10 trillion dollars. And the producers and distributors have convinced themselves this group doesn't go to the movies.
Only a fool thinks price and value are the same.
I wasn't a visionary but I literally had my finger on the pulse of the women of America.
Certainly, the human race can be fickle, and times do change, but overall, the barriers to bringing a product to market - and understanding what 'the market' wants - have remained unchanged.
The paradox of Steve Jobs's career is that he had no interest in listening to consumers - he was famously dismissive of market research - yet nonetheless had an amazing sense of what consumers actually wanted.
If you haven't created the time as an owner to understand why people are choosing your model over your competition, then you are only managing the business that comes in the door, not actively seeking it out.
Successful strategic vision lay in the fact that we visualized the retail business to be much bigger, ahead of what others thought it to be.
Businesses want to think in terms of categories. Consumers want us to think in terms of their needs.
Well, the most important thing in investing is to know what you're investing in, and if you're confident in the outcome, it's important to stay true to your position.
When you know who your customers are, that can give you an edge on the competition.
No formula in finance tells you that the moat is 28 feet wide and 16 feet deep. That's what drives the academics crazy. They can compute standard deviations and betas, but they can't understand moats.
It had always made sense to me to build a business based on what people really wanted, rather than guess what we thought they might want.
I'm not a Wall Street expert, but I can read the papers.
