Love in Business

The thing is, if you do an impression of someone, you have to like the person, because you're playing the person and people like themselves.

-Norm Macdonald

The Norm quote was commenting why Alec Baldwin’s Trump impression wasn’t funny to him. The same is true when companies copy each other.

When Instagram copied Snap’s stories feature, it was because they loved it. You could tell they were active users and understood why Snap built the product. The engineers and designers at Instagram loved the stories feature. If they thought it was a stupid feature, they would have built it half assed and not have elevated the experience. Instagram built stories and added their own flavor to it. This is why it worked. They loved their competition.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

-Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

To truly understand someone, you must answer why they do what they do. You gain empathy for who they are, empathy for what they’ve experienced. There but for the grace of God go I.

This is how I feel about legacy tech companies in the real estate space. Early on, I thought they were stupid. I assumed incompetence. But it’s not incompetence. Given the tools they had at the time, they did what was possible.

I simulate the internal conversations they must have had. The product meetings they had. The iterations they went through. The design and architecture they decided upon. They were hardworking people. It’s not an easy product to build, especially back when they started. I see why they did what they did. It makes sense. They aren’t stupid. They were innovators in their day. It all makes sense.

At the same time, I see their weakness. I see their vulnerabilities. I see how they think. It’s odd to feel a sense of love for your competition, but it’s innately human. It’s necessary to understand even the most despicable of competitors or enemies.

It’s the same way historians who spend their lives studying Stalin and Hitler have an awe of the figures. They may not like what they did, but they have a tremendous amount of respect for them. So much so that they dedicate their lives to studying them. To truly understand something, you must love it.

Love your enemies. It’s the best way to destroy them.