It’s counterintuitive for big company leaders, but sometimes overcommitting is the issue. When you fund an initiative with hundreds of millions of dollars and big fanfare, the pressure for a big outcome in an unrealistically short time hangs over the team. With fewer dollars and a more iterative, experimental approach, I suspect that by spending far less, they could have achieved far more. In retrospect, today Jeff agrees: “I had a team and a process that was set up for scale, not for experimentation. I wish I’d started small, with an entrepreneurial team, and got it started under the radar.
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