MIT’s Andrew McAfee’s inaugural Geek Way blog just came out, with a focus on our conversations that lead to the book. Midjourney must have a sixth sense too, as it chose to render a blend of SLS and ULA’s Atlas rocket, the opening art.
It has frank conversation with Ford’s Farley and a funny description of his reaction to my space-cadet evangelism for Starlink — the catalyst for his book The Geek Way.
The opening:
“Any company that thinks they’re not a software company is not long for this world, because the agile way we’ve learned to build software is becoming the agile way we build everything. I sometimes feel like I have a sixth sense. I can see dead companies. They don’t know they’re dead, but they’re dead because they’re not responsive enough. And the companies that iterate more quickly will just run circles around them. They’re innovating every couple of years on something that you might take seven years to do.”
– Steve Jurvetson, 2022
“…it’s so difficult for legacy car companies to get software right… Car companies haven’t written software like this, ever. They’ve never written software. So we’re literally writing the software to operate the vehicle for the first time ever.”
– Ford CEO Jim Farley, 2023
A conversation I had with Steve Jurvetson a few years back taught me to listen attentively to him. We were at a small conference about The Future, and he and I got to talking during a break.
Jurvetson is a gigantic space geek. When we visited his VC firm, the lobby looked like the atrium of the Air and Space Museum. He launches rockets in his spare time, and has an unaffected enthusiasm for all things orbital that makes the first season of For All Mankind look dour and cynical in comparison.”
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