4 ms·

Actually Jobs may very well have called Bezos in the moment. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a verbal/handshake deal up front between Steve and Jeff with any

by blihp 8y ago

Actually Jobs may very well have called Bezos in the moment. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a verbal/handshake deal up front between Steve and Jeff with any meetings/legal review involving the relevant staff to formalize and finalize coming after they had already reached an agreement in principle. That's often how deals get done at the executive level esp. if the parties know each other.

jaclaz 8y ago
>Actually Jobs may very well have called Bezos in the moment. Sure, though the article literally says that Jobs "called up Amazon", not Bezos. Besides the (hopefully) quick laugh, what I was trying to say was that the private/direct phone number of Jeff Bezos is unlikely to have been on a public directory and that the (untold) before is that the two already knew each other personally and had most probably already done business together, the telephone call is only a tiny part of how the deal matured. There are a lot of these articles that somehow push the concept that some people (geniuses/leaders/etc.) made quick decisions/deals/whatever game changing innovations on the spur of the moment and were successful at that only because of serendipity or intuition. While this may happen, I doubt that - even if the initial sparkle came "by chance" and "suddenly" - the merit of the success of this or that deal is to be attributed to that moment alone (as opposed to the before and the after). More like T. Edison: Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
- DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
  > Sure, though the article literally says that Jobs "called up Amazon", not Bezos. Just metonymy --- when we use an inanimate thing to stand in place of a person (like "North Korea agreed to a cease-fire", which is metonymy because the abstract concept of a country doesn't "agree to" anything). > what I was trying to say was that the private/direct phone number of Jeff Bezos is unlikely to have been on a public directory Doesn't need to be public. These high-level people (CEOs, famous musicians, etc.) have easy ways to contact one another. They might have only met once and exchanged numbers "just in case", or maybe the story was a shorthand way of saying "Steve had his secretary call Bezos's secretary right then" (which is entirely possible to do spur-of-the-moment if Apple had ever had contact with Amazon at all). I think the spirit of the story --- that the call took a very short time, maybe a couple minutes --- is totally reasonable. Tim Cook told a story once that he was unsure what to do at some point with regard to shareholders or something, so he called up Warren Buffett. Apparently they had exchanged numbers once in the past when they had been at some event together or something like that. It was a spur-of-the-moment call without any phone tag, at least as Cook tells the story.
  - jaclaz 8y ago
    >Just metonymy --- I know, but you cannot use it "asymmetrically" in a case such as this. Apple may metonymically call Amazon, but if the call (and the deal) is initiated by Steve Jobs, the call (and deal) is received by Jeff Bezos or by one of his top executives. BTW there is an evident need for symmetry also for the "merit" of the fast decision/acceptance by the receiving party, you cannot incense the one making the fast, direct and serendipitous proposal and then hide the one (person) on the other side that so quickly accepted it (for 1M $) under the metonymy. >Tim Cook told a story once that he was unsure what to do at some point with regard to shareholders or something, so he called up Warren Buffett. Yep, he didn't call up Berkshire Hathaway.
    - DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
      > but you cannot use it "asimmetrically" in a case such as this. You absolutely can. Setting: a restaurant. Steve is another employee. "Hey, did Steve take the bill to the ham sandwich?" This is 100% acceptable. Just because you don't use it doesn't mean it's unacceptable. For more on metonymy and examples of it, check out the book "Metaphors We Live By". There are a few chapters devoted to real-world uses of metonymy, and this is absolutely common among native English speakers. Also, do you have something against using the letter y for the "kit" vowel? I've never seen spellings like "simmetry" or "metonimy" before in any dialect. (Honest question.) > Yep, he didn't call up Berkshire Hathaway. Is it so unbelievable that wealthy people might have met once and exchange phone numbers? What use would Berkshire Hathaway be for him? He wanted advice from Buffett directly, not some other person, nor the company as an entity. Also, your argument doesn't make any sense anymore. Why is it that you feel Tim Cook has to call Berkshire Hathaway (company) and not Warren Buffet (person), but you think that Steve Jobs called Jeff Bezos (person) and not Amazon (company)?
      - jaclaz 8y ago
        >Also, do you have something against using the letter y for the "kit" vowel? I've never seen spellings like "simmetry" or "metonimy" before in any dialect. (Honest question.) Only typos, sorry, corrected. >Is it so unbelievable that wealthy people might have met once and exchange phone numbers? What use would Berkshire Hathaway be for him? He wanted advice from Buffett directly, not some other person, nor the company as an entity. Not at all unbelievable, actually very probable, I was only pointing out how you didn't use the metonymy in your Tim Cook example.
- blihp 8y ago
  The thing is, sometimes deals do happen exactly as the article describes. Most of the time, most business deals work as you say: slow and methodical and/or based on relationships built up over time. However, it's not unreasonable to believe that things went down pretty much as the post described. Consider that a million dollars to either Steve or Jeff back in the late 90's was rounding error. Also, consider the history of the one-click patent[1] So let's say that Steve and Jeff hadn't ever met or talked before. Steve is in a discussion with people at Apple and the subject of one-click comes up and Steve thinks 'we need that!'. Not having Jeff's number, Steve gets Amazon's main number off their web site calls and says 'This is Steve Jobs... I need to talk to Jeff'[2] Maybe the person at Amazon takes him at his word, maybe there's some verbal jousting involved, but after a few minutes he gets through to Jeff. Now they're on the line with each other and Steve pitches licensing the patent for Apple. Jeff says 'sounds good, let's do it.' [3] Now, at this point both of them probably hand things off to their staff and say 'get this done' and lots of activity occurs to dot the i's and cross the t's. This is not outside the realm of possibility. For example, Warren Buffet is known to have done much larger deals with people he's never met in a surprisingly short period of time.[4] Sure, there's usually due diligence done[5] that is more drawn out during which the details are fleshed out. But an actual (large dollar) deal can get done (i.e. agreed to in principle) with less time/energy involved than many of us invest when spending a few hundred dollars. So that's a very long-winded way of saying: for most people (i.e. hired guns) it doesn't work that way, but when you're the founder/owner it can if you want it to. ====================================== [1] I'm not sure if you were around/paying attention when the one-click patent happened but there are a few things I remember: 1) it was not a very popular patent to many outside Amazon 2) it was not clear whether or not the patent was even valid 3) there was a lot of hand-wringing about if it was granted it should only be used for defensive purposes (i.e. that it might be fine to get it as a defense against patent trolls but that Bezos shouldn't try to monetize it.) [2] Not unheard of or even out of character if you believe half the stories told about Steve like the time he supposedly walked into General Motors HQ for an impromptu meeting with their then CEO, Roger Smith... who took the meeting. Reasons why he might take this kind of meeting range from 'I'm bored.. why not' to 'the balls on this guy... this should be good for a laugh' to 'this guy might be a good contact to have down the road.' Also, if you've ever worked for a 'don't you know who I am?' kind of boss, this type of behavior is entirely believable at face value as you've likely lived it. [3] Maybe Jeff is thinking that having Apple endorse the patent strengthens it and that's a good thing, maybe he thinks that the patent is a dead end and Steve's offering some easy money so what the hell, maybe he's looking at the bigger picture in terms of developing a deeper relationship with Apple. Who knows, but he has several potential motivations. [4] http://fortune.com/2016/11/02/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-deals/ http://fortune.com/2016/11/02/warren-buffett-berkshire-hatha... [5] Except when it's not. Like back when eBay 'bought' Skype... except they forgot the IP which was the valuable part. Or Theranos. Or Madoff. etc. etc.

by blihp 8y ago

jaclaz 8y ago

>Actually Jobs may very well have called Bezos in the moment. Sure, though the article literally says that Jobs "called up Amazon", not Bezos. Besides the (hopefully) quick laugh, what I was trying to say was that the private/direct phone number of Jeff Bezos is unlikely to have been on a public directory and that the (untold) before is that the two already knew each other personally and had most probably already done business together, the telephone call is only a tiny part of how the deal matured. There are a lot of these articles that somehow push the concept that some people (geniuses/leaders/etc.) made quick decisions/deals/whatever game changing innovations on the spur of the moment and were successful at that only because of serendipity or intuition. While this may happen, I doubt that - even if the initial sparkle came "by chance" and "suddenly" - the merit of the success of this or that deal is to be attributed to that moment alone (as opposed to the before and the after). More like T. Edison: Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
> Sure, though the article literally says that Jobs "called up Amazon", not Bezos. Just metonymy --- when we use an inanimate thing to stand in place of a person (like "North Korea agreed to a cease-fire", which is metonymy because the abstract concept of a country doesn't "agree to" anything). > what I was trying to say was that the private/direct phone number of Jeff Bezos is unlikely to have been on a public directory Doesn't need to be public. These high-level people (CEOs, famous musicians, etc.) have easy ways to contact one another. They might have only met once and exchanged numbers "just in case", or maybe the story was a shorthand way of saying "Steve had his secretary call Bezos's secretary right then" (which is entirely possible to do spur-of-the-moment if Apple had ever had contact with Amazon at all). I think the spirit of the story --- that the call took a very short time, maybe a couple minutes --- is totally reasonable. Tim Cook told a story once that he was unsure what to do at some point with regard to shareholders or something, so he called up Warren Buffett. Apparently they had exchanged numbers once in the past when they had been at some event together or something like that. It was a spur-of-the-moment call without any phone tag, at least as Cook tells the story.
- jaclaz 8y ago
  >Just metonymy --- I know, but you cannot use it "asymmetrically" in a case such as this. Apple may metonymically call Amazon, but if the call (and the deal) is initiated by Steve Jobs, the call (and deal) is received by Jeff Bezos or by one of his top executives. BTW there is an evident need for symmetry also for the "merit" of the fast decision/acceptance by the receiving party, you cannot incense the one making the fast, direct and serendipitous proposal and then hide the one (person) on the other side that so quickly accepted it (for 1M $) under the metonymy. >Tim Cook told a story once that he was unsure what to do at some point with regard to shareholders or something, so he called up Warren Buffett. Yep, he didn't call up Berkshire Hathaway.
  - DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
    > but you cannot use it "asimmetrically" in a case such as this. You absolutely can. Setting: a restaurant. Steve is another employee. "Hey, did Steve take the bill to the ham sandwich?" This is 100% acceptable. Just because you don't use it doesn't mean it's unacceptable. For more on metonymy and examples of it, check out the book "Metaphors We Live By". There are a few chapters devoted to real-world uses of metonymy, and this is absolutely common among native English speakers. Also, do you have something against using the letter y for the "kit" vowel? I've never seen spellings like "simmetry" or "metonimy" before in any dialect. (Honest question.) > Yep, he didn't call up Berkshire Hathaway. Is it so unbelievable that wealthy people might have met once and exchange phone numbers? What use would Berkshire Hathaway be for him? He wanted advice from Buffett directly, not some other person, nor the company as an entity. Also, your argument doesn't make any sense anymore. Why is it that you feel Tim Cook has to call Berkshire Hathaway (company) and not Warren Buffet (person), but you think that Steve Jobs called Jeff Bezos (person) and not Amazon (company)?
    - jaclaz 8y ago
      >Also, do you have something against using the letter y for the "kit" vowel? I've never seen spellings like "simmetry" or "metonimy" before in any dialect. (Honest question.) Only typos, sorry, corrected. >Is it so unbelievable that wealthy people might have met once and exchange phone numbers? What use would Berkshire Hathaway be for him? He wanted advice from Buffett directly, not some other person, nor the company as an entity. Not at all unbelievable, actually very probable, I was only pointing out how you didn't use the metonymy in your Tim Cook example.
blihp 8y ago
The thing is, sometimes deals do happen exactly as the article describes. Most of the time, most business deals work as you say: slow and methodical and/or based on relationships built up over time. However, it's not unreasonable to believe that things went down pretty much as the post described. Consider that a million dollars to either Steve or Jeff back in the late 90's was rounding error. Also, consider the history of the one-click patent[1] So let's say that Steve and Jeff hadn't ever met or talked before. Steve is in a discussion with people at Apple and the subject of one-click comes up and Steve thinks 'we need that!'. Not having Jeff's number, Steve gets Amazon's main number off their web site calls and says 'This is Steve Jobs... I need to talk to Jeff'[2] Maybe the person at Amazon takes him at his word, maybe there's some verbal jousting involved, but after a few minutes he gets through to Jeff. Now they're on the line with each other and Steve pitches licensing the patent for Apple. Jeff says 'sounds good, let's do it.' [3] Now, at this point both of them probably hand things off to their staff and say 'get this done' and lots of activity occurs to dot the i's and cross the t's. This is not outside the realm of possibility. For example, Warren Buffet is known to have done much larger deals with people he's never met in a surprisingly short period of time.[4] Sure, there's usually due diligence done[5] that is more drawn out during which the details are fleshed out. But an actual (large dollar) deal can get done (i.e. agreed to in principle) with less time/energy involved than many of us invest when spending a few hundred dollars. So that's a very long-winded way of saying: for most people (i.e. hired guns) it doesn't work that way, but when you're the founder/owner it can if you want it to. ====================================== [1] I'm not sure if you were around/paying attention when the one-click patent happened but there are a few things I remember: 1) it was not a very popular patent to many outside Amazon 2) it was not clear whether or not the patent was even valid 3) there was a lot of hand-wringing about if it was granted it should only be used for defensive purposes (i.e. that it might be fine to get it as a defense against patent trolls but that Bezos shouldn't try to monetize it.) [2] Not unheard of or even out of character if you believe half the stories told about Steve like the time he supposedly walked into General Motors HQ for an impromptu meeting with their then CEO, Roger Smith... who took the meeting. Reasons why he might take this kind of meeting range from 'I'm bored.. why not' to 'the balls on this guy... this should be good for a laugh' to 'this guy might be a good contact to have down the road.' Also, if you've ever worked for a 'don't you know who I am?' kind of boss, this type of behavior is entirely believable at face value as you've likely lived it. [3] Maybe Jeff is thinking that having Apple endorse the patent strengthens it and that's a good thing, maybe he thinks that the patent is a dead end and Steve's offering some easy money so what the hell, maybe he's looking at the bigger picture in terms of developing a deeper relationship with Apple. Who knows, but he has several potential motivations. [4] http://fortune.com/2016/11/02/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-deals/ http://fortune.com/2016/11/02/warren-buffett-berkshire-hatha... [5] Except when it's not. Like back when eBay 'bought' Skype... except they forgot the IP which was the valuable part. Or Theranos. Or Madoff. etc. etc.