Steve Jobs was a huge fan of The Beatles and even once said:

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.

This comparison really rings true to me for the best of founding teams. You have a group of talented people who each can do several things well and likely one thing amazingly well. They also will have deficiencies which hopefully get covered by others’ strengths. 

Inevitably, people want to go off and do their own thing even after accomplishing some amazing things together. The Beatles eventually disbanded as each of the highly talented individuals wanted to be more central and have their own successful careers as individuals (though that didn’t stop them from the occasional collaborations). Companies are not that different than bands it would seem: only Mark Zuckerberg is left at Facebook and Jack Dorsey at Twitter, while their co-founders and early employees have occasionally gotten back together to work on things.

The dissolution of The Beatles certainly doesn’t diminish what they had accomplished which was unrivaled. I entirely agree with Jobs that The The Beatles completely overshadow The Rolling Stones. That said, I do wonder sometimes if the better model for business and founders would be The Rolling Stones. Those guys managed to stay together all these years while producing some great work. They did occassionally have to replace people, but they’re still rocking it.

Isn’t that what it’s all about? Making something for the world to enjoy with the right balance of people you enjoy working with.

Henry Ford

On my recent trip to Shanghai, I was amazed by the sheer scale of construction and building going on there. In the Pudong district, you can see two of the world’s largest towers standing next to each other. What’s incredible is how short lived their reigns as China’s tallest tower (and among the world’s tallest 10) last despite their incredible sizes.

9 years separated the incredible 88 floor tall Jin Mao tower from the 101 floor Shanghai World Financial Center. Just 6 years after the new leader was built, the Shanghai Tower will take the top spot. Not only are the towers getting taller but they are doing so faster!

This got me thinking about the digital landscape. Social networks and online properties keep growing bigger and bigger. Even entrepreneurs like Mark Pincus describe wanting to build “skyscraper websites.” Every year there is a new big thing that threatens to outgrow the last thing. Every year there is a new “fastest growing thing” (Pinterest is this year’s). The world is heading to larger and larger scale at a faster and faster pace.

The sheer sizes of all the physical and digital properties are certainly impressive but I have started to wonder if they really matter ultimately. Will any of these things matter in their own right when they are no longer no. 1 in size? 

View from the new no.1 tallest tower in China, looking down at the no.2 tallest tower.

Chris Dixon

My guest article on MediaPost about the yellow page industry shift towards local display advertising from just local search.

Traveling from the US to another country always gives me some new perspective.

The other day I was flying from San Francisco to Shanghai, and I was surprised to find there were no individual televisions on the plane — a rarity on most of my domestic flights now and even more rare on international flights I’ve taken. After my momentary shock, I remembered the Louis CK bit “Everything is amazing and no one is happy” and I became grateful for the fact I was about to travel half way around the world in less than 12 hours, a feat previously unthinkable a half century ago. 

There’s so much I take for granted in the US — access to social media, clean air, personal space, and much more, which I quickly think about once I don’t have them.

In spite of some of the personal inconveniences of foreign travels, I am always impressed by what goes on in other countries. Looking out on the skyline of Shanghai, I can’t help but feel in awe of its rapid development and modernity.

The sheer size of cities puts things in perspective: Shanghai has 23,000,000 people while San Francisco has 800,000. It’s so easy to think Silicon Valley is the center of the world and the epicenter of world’s largest tech market but the truth is international markets dwarf us in size.

There’s so much to learn from how others are doing things. One easy example is a bus spot I spotted in London: 

It makes so much more sense to have the glass protecting people waiting for buses rather than simply shielding them from the rest of the sidewalk. I feel like much of the day-to-day human experience is universal so the rest of the world is grappling with the many similar problems as those of us have in the US. There’s likely many innovative solutions out there waiting to be found and shared — that’s why I love traveling internationally so much.