Craftsmanship

Time flies and it's been 7 years since I mentioned The Lost Interview for the first time. It is a great interview to watch, especially from the 2019 perspective it is still very relevant, after 25 years.
Actually what triggered me to bring The Lost Interview and watch it again was The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley documentary on Threanos.

The Theranos story is pretty well known now but it is still unbelievably striking how so many people affiliated with the company were for so long submerged in a state of complete lunacy.

There was this huge gap between the vision and being able to make it happen. The vision, by the way, was and still is a no brainier. But equally I could have a vision of a nano - confined nuclear fusion that could power anything forever for free. The "only" issue is how to make it work. Is it possible at all?

This lunacy at Theranos was of course fueled by lies. Elizabeth Holmes started with minor lies, such as suggesting the company has military contracts. Then she continued making it impossible for anyone to verify the real state of the matters, even faking the tests with investors. Very likely believing that lies were not lies as there was a good cause for them. But then one lie snowballed into the avalanche. Which still does not explain the lunacy completely, as someone should have done some checks, like having a test at Walgreens.

Holmes was soo trying to be like Steve Jobs. Yet she missed (or just denied) the most important part that Steve was repeating all the time: the craftsmanship gap between an idea and a product. Watch it at 36:30.

The disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all the other people" "here is this great idea" then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is there's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product. As you evolve that great idea it changes and grows.

I think this is the key message to all Jobs - wannabees.