> As Jobs said, "Customers don't know what they want"
I see (and somewhat agree with) your point, but you're quoting/linking an article titled "Five Dangerous Lessons to Learn From Steve Jobs" that states just before the first bullet "here are some of the worst lessons to learn from Steve Jobs"
A better quote may be PG's "Make something people want"[1] - and if ~90% of the people you sell to are saying they want on-prem I'm not sure how (without clairvoyance or hubris) you can say for sure "nah, they're all wrong."
Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are much larger than VMware and can afford to put a lot more resources behind things that may never bear fruit - VMW had $1.8B in revenue in 2008[2], MSFT had $60B[3].
I see (and somewhat agree with) your point, but you're quoting/linking an article titled "Five Dangerous Lessons to Learn From Steve Jobs" that states just before the first bullet "here are some of the worst lessons to learn from Steve Jobs"
A better quote may be PG's "Make something people want"[1] - and if ~90% of the people you sell to are saying they want on-prem I'm not sure how (without clairvoyance or hubris) you can say for sure "nah, they're all wrong."
Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are much larger than VMware and can afford to put a lot more resources behind things that may never bear fruit - VMW had $1.8B in revenue in 2008[2], MSFT had $60B[3].
[1] http://paulgraham.com/good.html
[2] http://ir.vmware.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-09-38030...
[3] https://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Tre...