Founders

Chip Wars Cast #3

Optimistic Builders > Intelligent analysts + realists

60s and 70s would have been very difficult to predict. The role of the military, not small but not that big, offshoring, the political dynamics. So many moving parts, from as big as countries to as small as a single person. You can see brilliant analysis both decades that at best is right in a specific scenario but misses the mark as much as to be useless due to all the parts and layers involved.  

The only view that held up and captured all the nuances in an actionable way was the simplest. The view of the optimistic builders. That the future was dazzlingly bright. Captured by insights like Moore’s law (transistors in a chip 2x every ~2 years.)

The ones who held this optimistic view with enough conviction, and were so enamoured with the implications that they acted as if Moore's law was a stated fact instead of a simple prediction. The clever analysis and nuances ended up being less important in the long run.

A lesson here for us.