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Talked to a guy who'd had several genuinely good startup ideas. None had worked. Why? Because he was neither a programmer nor had a cofounder who was. So he had to hire them, and that put him at the mercy of partners who had nothing to recommend them except access to money.
Talked to a Guy Who'd Ha...
@paulg on Twitter
A start-up is, in Peter’s definition, “a small group of people that you’ve convinced of a truth that nobody else believes in.” This is a fitting definition of what has assembled here
Kelly briefed LeMay personally and invited several of us who were experts on various components of the airplane to sit in just in case the general had technical questions. I was intrigued watching the big, two-fisted LeMay puffing on a thick cigar, his shrewd eyes focused in concentration as Kelly zipped through a classified slide show detailing all the performance characteristics of the new airplane. “Could you fire air-to-ground missiles from that airplane while going at Mach 3 speed?” the general asked Kelly. Kelly replied affirmatively. “We’ve done the theoretics on this, General, and we feel confident that we could do this successfully.” “Could you guide a missile to within two hundred feet of a target?” LeMay asked. Kelly again said yes, theoretically, and added that if the missiles were nuclear, pinpoint accuracy was unnecessary. Used as a deep-penetration tactical bomber, the Russians couldn’t stop us. Used as an interceptor, we were also unstoppable. Using look-down, shoot-down air-to-air missiles, our high-flying interceptor could defend all of North America against any long-range bomber force that would be expected to fly low to the deck to avoid radar detection. “With our speed,” Kelly insisted, “fewer interceptors would be needed to cover the entire North American continent. We’d look down at the Soviet bomber fleet and pick them off like fish in a barrel.” Kelly declared, “General, the fellow who gains the high ground takes the battle. Our speed gives us our height. We’re king of the mountain.”
Skunk Works
Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
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