Market research, playing the right games, and obsession

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Steve Jobs on Market Research

Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.”

But that’s not my approach.

Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.

Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!'"

People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

That’s why I never rely on market research.

Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

Source: Make Something Wonderful

2: On Playing The Right Games

“The most value comes from doing something no one else can do, or no one else has thought of, in a way that is hard for other people to copy. If you try to be just like everyone else, and do just what they’re doing, you will maybe do ok but certainly not great.”
— Sam Altman

“You can escape competition through authenticity when you realize that no one can compete with you on being you. That would have been useless advice pre-internet. Post-internet, you can turn that into a career.”
— Naval Ravikant

“I don't want to play in a game where the other guy has an advantage. Somebody asked: How do you beat Bobby Fisher? The answer is you play him in any game except chess."
— Warren Buffet

“My advice for you — the advice I wish I could have given my younger self — is this: Before getting swept up in the competitions that define so much of life, ask yourself whether you even want the prize on offer.”
— Peter Thiel

3: On Obsession

Michael Moritz: “Back in the 1980s, Bill Gates gave me a ride to the airport, and the radio was missing from the car. Big gaping hole in the dashboard. I said ‘Bill what happened, did you get ripped off?”

Bill Gates: “No, I had it taken out.”

Micahel Moritz: “Why did you have it taken out?”

Bill Gates: “I drive from my home to the office, which is seven minutes and 32 seconds. And then I’ll drive from the office to the airport which is however long. If I’ve got the radio, I’m afraid that I’ll switch it on and I won’t be thinking about Microsoft.”

“That’s obsession.”

Source: Michael Moritz (Sequoia Capital) at Stanford GSB (h/t: Zach Pogrob)

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- Jay + The Z Fellows Team

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