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https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | I hope to pass on some of my theories of business to our people, and I hope these theories are used in our business for as long as the Les Schwab Company continues. Should we fail to follow these policies toward customers and employees, I would prefer that my name be taken off the business. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | One of my biggest fears was that my father would come to school on Friday drunk. I was proud; poor, but I had a lot of pride. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | My father was found dead in front of a moonshine joint. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | My school was just a railroad boxcar with crooked window cut in one side of the boxcar. There were three of us in 8th grade. We all failed. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | I was sometimes cocky; but this same cockiness helped me a lot in going through life. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | The company paid low wages and had a lower overhead. The flaw was they didn’t get —with the low pay— near the quality of employees we had. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | I encourage you to share profits with your employees. I encourage you in every way possible to “Build People.” If you make people under you successful, what happens to you? Aren’t you also then successful? What nicer thing can you do with your life than to help young people build their lives into successful people. The older I get the more proud I am of the profit sharing programs that I have created. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | I had always wanted to be a businessman, but I didn’t have any money. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | I was 33 years old and still wanting to go into a business of my own. Money was the main thing holding me up. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | I thought the tire business had a future. I remember telling my wife I thought I was a salesman and maybe that ability could be used in the tire business. It was hard, knuckle busting, dirty work. I had never fixed a flat tire in my life. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | We must constantly remind ourselves as to just why we are successful and what we must do to continue to be successful; because if we become complacent, brother it’s all over with. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | The pressure on me was tremendous. My largest account was way behind on payments and it worried me to no end. My net worth was about the same as what they owed me. If they had gone broke at that time they would have taken me with them, and the Les Schwab story would have ended right there. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | Some of our office people sometimes wonder about this. But I’ve warned them, don’t bitch to me because that is the way I want it. If you want to go out and start at the bottom changing tires and work into a manager job, then hop right to it. If it weren’t for those men in the stores working their butts off in all kinds of weather, missing meals, God awful hours, etc. you wouldn’t even have a job. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | Now that we share with all people, if any one employee sees another employee steal they are a weak kitten if they don’t report it. Why? Because this man is stealing from them, from his children. If he won’t fight for his children, he can’t be very much. For a company as large as ours we have very little dishonesty. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | We share 50% of our profits with all the employees in the store. My thinking has always been if I give away half the profits I still have half. If I share $10 million with people I still have $10 million left over. I don’t understand why businessmen can’t do this. It is being unselfish for good reasons. It helps a lot of people. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | Success in life is being a good husband, a good father and you end up being a second father to hundreds of other men and women. Last night I attended a wedding of a young man from our office. This young man told me that two men had influenced his life, his father and me. That’s worth more than money. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/les-schwab-pride-in-performance-keep-it-going-52b01cf3 | We are different from most American corporations, as we think the most important people in the company are the people on the firing line; the ones who sell, do the service work and take care of the customer. Most American corporations have the fat salaries for the top people and treat the people at the end of the line as peons. I guess that is why, if you are on the ball, you can beat them on any type of fair competitive basis. | Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | In one lifetime, we can become a revered, immortalized politician, a scholar, a revolutionary, a writer, a musician, a painter, or a businessman like those we admire. These remarkable people did not take two or three lifetimes to accomplish what they did. They did it in one. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | I think there is nothing more foolish than living a life according to the mantra of “doing enough to get by” and not knowing how precious one’s time is. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | When someone said that a proposed project would be impossible, his famous response was, “Did you try?” | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | If you make full use of your time by living diligently, you can excel in any field. Such a life would be considered a successful one. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | He had the ability to remain unperturbed in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | Time is a form of capital provided equally to everyone. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | If I can be considered a successful person it is only because I made the best use of this evenly distributed capital. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | Back in those days, human feces (night soil) was the primary fertilizer for dry fields. So even when adults visited their friends or children kicked around an inflated pig’s bladder, they all made sure to relieve themselves at home when nature called to add to their essential stockpile of fertilizer. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | We were extremely poor. Even though my mother and father worked their fingers to the bone to make ends meet. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | We would completely run out of food. We barely managed to stay alive by eating tree bark, grass, and wild herbs. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | There was no concept of free time. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | My future seemed bleak. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | My parents' arguments were always about food. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | When I went to the market to sell wood, it was difficult to take my eyes off of the rice cakes, noodles, and other delicious treats. I still remember how my shrunken belly growled with pangs of hunger. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | After I turned 19, I ran away from home for the fourth time. That fourth time ended up being the last. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | I scoured the city for a better job. A rice shop hired me as a delivery boy. For the first time in my life, I felt optimistic about my future. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | Whatever I did, I never slacked off. Compared to farming, the workload at the rice store was nothing. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | No matter how small the task, such as delivering rice on a bicycle, I pour all of my energy into achieving the best possible result. Half measures, compromises, cutting corners, or “being realistic” do not exist in my world. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | Two years passed. One day, all my hard work finally paid off. He unexpectedly offered to sell me the rice shop. The delivery boy had now become the owner. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/born-of-this-land-my-life-story-40f9b4b1 | I renamed my shop “number one in Seoul,” and aimed to make it the best rice shop in all of Seoul. | Born of This Land: My Life Story | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | As a colleague acknowledged many years later, this man “never had an ordinary reaction to anything.” | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | There’s a rule they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School: if anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | Land recalled that his “whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.” | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | Concentrated, uninterrupted mental effort that seems to me to be the source, not only of science, but also of everything that is worthwhile in life. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | He learned one very important lesson. “I knew then that I would never go into a commercial field that put a barrier between us and the customer.” Rather than deal with other companies as intermediaries, he would market his innovative products directly to the public. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | He sees himself as determined, iron-willed and hard driving, a man who will not rest until he has conquered whatever problem is at hand. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | He believed “that the role of industry is to sense a deep human need, then bring science and technology to bear on filling that need. Any market already existing is inherently boring and dull.” Land, like Steve Jobs many decades later, believed that his company should “give people products they do not even know they want.” | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | Early in his career, as the founder of a fledgling Silicon Valley company, Jobs had the opportunity to visit with Land, who described to Jobs his vision for the technology company of the future. Jobs confessed to a reporter that getting to meet Land was “like visiting a shrine.” Many years later, Jobs admiringly assured Land that in building Apple, he had tried to emulate the ideals Land had described to him. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | The research of science is nothing but failures. You fail and fail and fail, and when you succeed you stop. So the record of science is experiments that didn’t work and that are then the basis of one that does work. The reason I know is because what we offer and what we are selling is the embodiment of all those failures, it is the record. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | The year began with the induction of Edwin Land into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The U.S. Patent Office had established this institution in 1973 and had made Thomas Edison its first inductee. Land was joining an august and highly selective group that included the most important inventors in history, including Alexander Graham Bell (telephone), Eli Whitney (cotton gin), the Wright Brothers (airplane), Guglielmo Marconi (radio telegraphy), Samuel Morse (telegraph), Cyrus McCormack (reaper), Charles Goodyear (vulcanized rubber), and Rudolf Diesel (internal combustion engine). He was the first inductee ever admitted during his lifetime. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | One of Land’s great strengths as a scientist, one that made him virtually indefatigable, was his understanding that to research necessarily meant to endure without discouragement the “error” part of the “trial and error” axiom. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | A worthwhile invention must be startling, unexpected and must come into a world that is not prepared for it. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | Land later acknowledged, “You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with the experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.” | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | I think whether outside science or within science there is no such thing as group originality or group creativity or group perspicacity. I do believe wholeheartedly in the individual capacity for greatness. Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | If you are right, the facts at the moment don’t matter because in due course the facts will catch up with you. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | Articulating a philosophy that would later become the mantra of Apple’s Steve Jobs, Land proclaimed, “We don’t do market surveys. We create the markets with our products.” | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | With great enthusiasm, back in his role as professor in residence on the witness stand, Land proceeded to explain the differences in great detail, providing a historical perspective on the development of these camera mechanisms going back to the days of Thomas Edison. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | Land’s central message was to make it “clear that he does not intend to allow anyone at Polaroid to devote too much of its resources to diversification." | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | The formula for accomplishment he practiced throughout his life—creative wonderment and intellectual curiosity followed by inexhaustible effort—remains a model that should inform and inspire us all, no matter the particular field of our endeavor. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/a-triumph-of-genius-edwin-land-polaroid-and-the-kodak-patent-war-9e8f3764 | To understand Polaroid, you must understand Land. Land is creative, and he has the well-grounded suspicion that good, careful, systematic planning can kill a creative company. | A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Carmack and Romero personified an American dream: they were self-made individuals who had transformed their personal passions into a big business, a new art form, and a cultural phenomenon. Their story made them the unlikeliest of antiheroes. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | The twenty-nine-year-old Carmack was a monkish and philanthropic programmer who built high-powered rockets in his spare time; his game and life aspired to the elegant discipline of computer code. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | As Carmack put it shortly after their break-up: “Romero wants an empire, I just want to create good programs.” | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | The computer underground did not discriminate by age; a geek was a geek was a geek. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | In the real world, children, especially, have no power; they must answer to everyone, they don’t direct their own lives, but in this game, they become super powerful and affect everything. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | “You’ll never make any money-making games,” he often said. “You need to make something people really need, like business applications.” | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Ken and Roberta Williams, a young married couple in Northern California, also pioneered the Ziploc distribution method, turning their homemade graphical role-playing games into a $ 10 million–a–year company, Sierra On-Line. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | His mother padlocked his comic book collection in a closet; unable to pick the lock, he removed the hinges and took off the door. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | “Boy behaves like a walking brain with legs . . . no empathy for other human beings.” | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | He was sentenced to one year in a small juvenile detention home in town. Most of the kids were in for drugs. Carmack was in for an Apple II. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Though he was barely getting by, Carmack relished the freelance lifestyle. He was in control of his time, slept as late as he wanted, and, even better, answered to no one. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Carmack was of the moment. His ruling force was focus. Time existed for him not in some promising future or sentimental past but in the present condition, the intricate web of problems and solutions, imagination, and code. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | He kept nothing from the past — no pictures, no records, no games, no computer disks. He didn’t even save copies of his first games. There was no yearbook to remind of his time at school, no magazine copies of his early publications. He kept nothing but what he needed at the time. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Shareware dated back to a guy named Andrew Fluegelman, founding editor of PC World magazine. In 1980, Fluegelman wrote a program called PC-Talk and released it online with a note saying that anyone who liked the wares should feel free to send him some “appreciation” money. Soon enough he had to hire a staff to count all the checks. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | When it came time to distribute the games, Scott took a long, hard look at the shareware market. He liked what he saw: the fact that he could run everything himself without having to deal with retailers or publishers. So he put out two text-based games in their entirety and waiting for the cash to roll in. But the cash didn’t roll; it didn’t even trickle. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Gamers, he realized, might be a different breed from those consumers who actually paid for utility shareware. They were more apt simply to take what they could get for free. Scott did some research and realized he wasn’t alone; other programmers who had released games in their entirety as shareware were broke too. People may be honest, he thought, but they’re also generally lazy. They need an incentive. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Then he got an idea. Instead of giving away the entire game, why not give out only the first portion, then make the player buy the rest of the game directly from him? No one had tried it before, but there was no reason it couldn’t work. The games Scott was making were perfectly suited to such a plan because they were broken up into short episodes or “levels” of play. He could simply put out, say , fifteen levels of a game, then tell players that if they sent him a check he would send them the remaining thirty. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | For every dollar he brought in, Scott was pocketing ninety cents. By the time he contacted Romero, he had earned $ 150,000 by word of mouth alone. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | They didn’t need any help getting motivated. Carmack seemed almost inhumanly immune to distraction. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | All of science and technology and culture and learning and academics is built upon using the work that others have done before, Carmack thought. But to take a patenting approach and say it’s like, well, this idea is my idea, you cannot extend this idea in any way, because I own this idea — it just seems so fundamentally wrong. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | The first Keen trilogy was now bringing in fifteen to twenty thousand dollars per month. Carmack was only twenty years old, Romero, twenty-three. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | He approached the dilemma as he had in Keen: try the obvious approach first; if that fails, think outside the box. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | The Keen games were at the top of the charts, bringing in close to sixty thousand dollars per month. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Carmack wasn’t interested in running a big company, he just wanted to program games. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | “We make the best stuff in shareware,” Romero proclaimed, “that’s why we’re making so much money.” | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | It was, he said, “an ugly hack.” This meant that it was an inelegant solution to an unnecessary problem. Making a game, writing code, for Carmack, was increasingly becoming an exercise in elegance: how to write something that achieved the desired effect in the cleanest way possible. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | The check was for $100,000. And this reflected only the first month. Together with the continued sales of the Keen games, id was heading for annual sales in the millions. By releasing the first episode as shareware, they’d instantly hooked the gamers, leaving them craving more. It defied logic — the thought of giving something away for free. But Scott’s plan had worked. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | The more business responsibilities they had—things like order fulfillment and marketing—the more they would lose their focus: making great games. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Carmack shrugged it off and returned to work. The same rule applied to a cat, a computer program, or, for that matter, a person. When something becomes a problem, let it go or, if necessary, have it surgically removed. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | In the company’s brief history, a pattern was emerging that emulated Carmack’s programming ideology: innovate, optimize, then jettison anything that gets in the way. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Since they were self-publishing Doom, they would be getting twice the earnings they had on Wolfenstein. Games distributed through the regular retail channels would bleed cash to middlemen. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | “If we can get this done,” Romero said, “this is going to be the fucking coolest game that the planet Earth has ever fucking seen in its entire history!” Carmack couldn’t have said it better himself. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | The plan was that id would upload the shareware on cue, then the gamers could download it and transfer it around the world. So much for high - priced distribution. The gamers would do all the work for id themselves. Jay had announced the day before in the chat rooms that Doom would be available at the stroke of midnight on December 10. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | It was also a cash cow. The day after Doom’s release, id saw profit. Even though only an estimated 1 percent of people who downloaded shareware bought the remaining game, $100,000 worth of orders were rolling in every day. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Carmack was no longer a boy dreaming of computers in his Kansas City bedroom; he was the twenty-three-year-old owner of a multimillion-dollar company, and he could do whatever the fuck he wanted. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | No sales force, no inventory costs, no royalties to Nintendo or Sega, no marketing costs, no advertising costs, no executive parking spaces. This is a new and exciting business model, not just for games, and not even just for software, but for a host of products and services that can be sold or delivered via an electronic underground. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | He had become the man he had envisioned all those years before. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Carmack had never really gotten the appeal most people found in hapless diversions. He would see things on television about drunken spring break beach weekends, and none of it would compute. A lot of people didn’t seem to enjoy their work. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Carmack began the project as he often did, by reading as much research material as he could gather. He paid thousands of dollars for textbooks and papers. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | Carmack had long behaved this way, unconcerned with the conventional etiquette of how to begin, continue, and conclude a dialogue with another human being. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | “For any given project there is some team size beyond which adding more people will actually cause things to take longer. This is due to loss of efficiency from chopping up problems, communication overhead, and just plain entropy. It’s even easier to reduce quality by adding people. I contend that the max programming team size for id is very small.” | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | “Romero is chaos and Carmack is order,” he said. “Together they made the ultimate mix . But when you take them away from each other, what’s left?” | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
https://world.hey.com/davidsenra/masters-of-doom-how-two-guys-created-an-empire-and-transformed-pop-culture-97acbc8e | The dream of the Big Company seemed to be proving too big after all, too loose, too high, too ambitious. All those things Carmack had berated him about — the hyperbole, the lack of focus, the dangers of a large team — had come back with a vengeance. | Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | 2021-05-21T00:00:00 |
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