Short-sighted visionary?
What was billed as a heavy-weight bout ala Rocky, turned out to be more like Notting Hill than anything else. The conversation between Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the D5 conference was still however, an interesting insight into the minds of two of the most durable technopreneurs in the business. Steve Jobs’ wise-cracks made him look like a mean, high-school bully and Bill Gates seemed like Bambi lost in One Infinite Loop.
What struck me the most was however the difference in the way Gates and Jobs view technology. Bill Gates, undoubtedly a shrewd businessman and a great tech visionary, in my mind appeared to have a disconnect with the world around him whereas Steve Jobs seemed more rooted to reality. Jobs seems to talk about how technology can be used to make his life better, (even the iPod and the iPhone were supposedly born out of Jobs’ frustration with the status quo) whereas Bill Gates always thinks about how it would make a customer’s life better. My point is that while it is absolutely essential that companies listen to customers, if your product isn’t useful or exciting to you (and not just from a ooh-I’m-working-on-cool-stuff perspective), you lose a lot of the motivation to improve it.
We at Bezurk strive to make travel search not just better for the world at large, but for ourselves. And we’re sure that as we refine our core products over the coming months, the pride that we take in developing them will shine through!
