Tim Harford

speaker

636 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2026 last heard 5d ago

Tim Harford’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.

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Then each alliance member contributed millions of dollars just to join the club.

Then money from retail investors poured in.

We had too much money, one of the company's vice presidents told David Epstein.

We never had to worry about payroll.

What startup in the world never has to worry about payroll?

So if you have apparently infinite money and a compelling vision of the pocket crystal, what are you going to do?

Try to build the pocket crystal, of course.

And if the pocket crystal simply couldn't be built with the technology of the early 1990s, try to build it anyway.

You've got talent.

You've got time.

Why compromise?

But the trouble with that approach is that it meant General Magic's engineers never had to be disciplined about what they were trying to do.

With less money, what would General Magic have done?

They might have reasoned, we have good partners and great engineers, but we only have so much cash.

We need a product that will sell.

What can we make with today's technology that someone will want to buy?

Instead, they never even got as far as defining someone.

The general magicians would talk about their target market as being Joe Sixpack.

You know, the ordinary person, the man on the street.

Everyone, really.

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