Tim Harford

speaker

411 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2026 last heard 6d 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 — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford · Talent, Time and Money: The Curse of General Magic · 11 Sep 2026 podcast

Because not only did General Magic not have any profits, they didn't even have any revenues.

In fact, they didn't even have a product.

They just had an idea.

Could you really sell tens of millions of dollars of shares to the general public just on the basis of an idea?

You could, if it was a good enough idea.

Wall Street loved it.

Investment bankers from the likes of Goldman Sachs elbowed each other aside for a piece of the action.

In the documentary film General Magic, Mark Peratt remembers them queuing up to pitch.

One of them said, what would it take?

If I gave you the shirt off my back, would that do it?

And I said...

Yeah, it would.

And he stripped down, and there we were, standing in the conference room with a half-naked banker.

He got the deal.

After launching General Magic shares on the stock market, the share price promptly doubled.

General Magic had all the money it could possibly want.

Money is useful, of course.

But you also need talent.

General Magic had a charismatic leader in the form of Mark Peratt, a man who could persuade you and the half-naked investment banker standing next to you that if you flapped your arms, you could fly.

The company also had Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson, the rock star programmers who gave the world the Apple Macintosh.

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